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Sir Walter Scott. 






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1771—1871. 



LIFE 



Sir Walter Scott; 



WITH REMARKS UPON HIS WRITINGS, 



ERAKCIS TURNER PALGRAYE. 



WITH AN ESSAY ON SCOTT, 

BY DAVID MASSON, M.A. 
AND 

DRYBURGH ABBEY: A POEM. 

BY CHARLES SWAIN. 



PHILADELPHIA: 
/ PORTER & C GATES. 
1871. 




OAXTOK PRESS OF 
SHERMAN & CO., PHILADELPHIA. 




SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

TTIIIN that small number of our country- 
men who have been known and admired 
throughout the civilized world during this 
century, three hold a place of unrivalled 
pre-eminence, — Wellington, Scott, and Byron. Each 
of the three kingdoms claims one of these heroes; 
but although Ireland and England may also point 
to something distinguishably national in the genius 
of their sons, yet it will not be disputed that Scot- 
land is far more exclusively and fully represented 
by Marmion and the Heart of Midlothian, than the 
spirit of England by Childe Harold, or that of Ireland 
by the Peninsular campaigns. We read in the early 
ages of the world how whole nations sprang from, and 
were known by the name of some one great chief, to 
whom a more than human rank was assigned by the 
poetry and the gratitude of later generations. Doris 
and Ionia were personified in Ion and Borus. It ap- 
pears not altogether fanciful to think similarly of 
Scott: in the phrase employed by the historians of 
Greece, he might be styled the eponymous hero of Scot- 
land. He suras up, or seems to sum up, in the most 
conspicuous manner, those leading qualities in which 
his countrymen, at least his countrymen of old, differ 
from their fellow Britons. No one human being can, 
however, be completely the representative man of his 
race, and some points may be observed in Scott which 
do not altogether reflect the national image. Yet, on 
the whole, Mr. Carlyle's estimate will probably be 
accepted as the truth: "No Scotchman of his time 
was more entirely Scotch than Walter Scott; the good 

( 5 ) 



6 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

and the not so good, which all Scotchmen inherit, ran 
through every fibre of him." 

The first and best reason for attempting the sketch 
of a poet's life is to throw light upon his poetry. In 
the case of Scott, whose verse forms only the earlier 
half of his writings, such a sketch would in strictness 
end with his forty-fifth year. It would be unpleasant, 
however, to break off thus : and the story of his career, 
even if he had not been author of "Marmion" and 
" Old Mortality," is in itself one of the most interest- 
ing which we possess. An eminently good and noble- 
hearted man, tried by almost equal extremes of for- 
tune, and victorious over both, — the life of Scott would 
be a tragic drama in the fullest sense, moving and 
teaching us at once through pity, and love, and terror, 
even if he had not also, in many ways, deserved the 
title of greatness. The aim of these pages will hence 
be to present a biography, complete in its main points, 
and including some remarks on Scott's position as a 
writer, which the accompanying narrative will, it is 
hoped, render easily intelligible. 

Scott's life may be conveniently divided into three 
periods: that of the child and the youth who had not 
yet found where his strength lay (1771-1799): that 
of his poetry, whether edited and translated by him, 
or original (1799-1814) : that of his novels, his wealth 
and his poverty (1814-1832). The time when his 
powers were full}' matured, and his happiest years, 
would lie about midway across the second and third 
of these periods; for the full "flower of his life" was 
fugitive in proportion to its brilliancy. A perceptible 
air of unity marks the lives of most poets. The char- 
acter and circumstances of Scott, on the contrary, 
present a crowd of singular contrasts ; there is a deep 
underlying harmony, which it is the main object of 



LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 7 

this sketch to trace, but at first sight he is a strikingly 
complex creatui-e; the number of antitheses about 
him, which aid in making him so representative a 
Scotchman, is the first and one of the main points 
which the reader should bear in mind. An antithesis 
of this kind meets us at once in the story; indeed, 
preceding the poet's birth, it exercised perhaps the 
most marked influence amongst the circumstances 
which moulded his career. Both in its position and 
its traditions, his family was eminently typical of 
much that we associate with his country. Though a 
solicitor of moderate means, at a time when the pro- 
fession had not won its way to a liberal standing in 
popular estimation, Scott's father, also Walter, reck- 
oned sociullj^ as of '^gentle blood," in virtue less of 
his high character than of his Border descent, which 
was traced through the Scotts of Harden to the main 
stem (now holding the ducal honors of Buccleuch), in 
the fourteenth century. The coarse plundering life 
of this and other clans, whose restlessness and rovincr 
warfare were long the misfortune and misery of the 
"Marches," has received from Scott all the tints 
which poetry could throw over an age softened by 
distance; the romance which it had in his eyes may 
have been increased by the curious resemblance which 
the energetic anarchy of the Border families estab- 
lishes between them and the clans, more correctly so 
called, of the Highlands; yet, if we turn from ballads 
to the actual story of the frontier raids, it is that com- 
mon tale of unholy ravage and murder which rather 
deserved the curse, than the consecration of poetry. 
Eemark also that the forays, so dear in the poet's eyes, 
do not belong to the warfare for the independence of 
Scotland; that they had very little political coloring, 
and were, in fact, picturesque fragments of a barbar- 



8 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

ous time raaiiitaincd long after date, through the mu- 
tual jealousy of the two neighbor kingdoms. They 
exhibit the law of hand against the law of head; or, 
again, from a more poetical point of view, they may 
be regarded as bold protests in favor of individuality, 
atrainst the monotonizini^* character of civilized and 
peaceful existence. Like much that we shall have to 
note in Scott's own career, the border clans were, in 
a certain sense, practical anachronisms, whose very 
likeness to the wild Highlanders of the north placed 
them in striking contrast to the love of law and peace- 
ful thrift which lies deep in the Scottish nature, and, 
until a few years before Scott's birth, led the Low- 
landers to regard their Celtic fellow-countrymen with 
a contempt and hatred, in effacing which it was the 
noble mission of his own genius to be the main instru- 
ment. 

These family details are here dwelt on, because they 
bear upon that quality which is peculiar to Scott's 
genius, and makes at once its strength and its weak- 
ness. It would be ditiicult to name another instance 
of a mind so habitually balanced between the real 
and the unreal. There have been those who had, for 
example, a stronger grasp of past ages ; but they have 
either comprehended them without regretting, as Hal- 
lam and Macaulay; or have distinctlj^ preferred them 
and adopted their ways of thought. Poets, again, 
have manifested as great a power as Scott over the 
actual and the present, as Burns and Crabbe, — but thej'- 
had no sympathy with the past : or have chosen their 
subjects in the past, as Drydcn in his Fables, and By- 
ron in his Plays, — but theirs was a simple poetical 
expedient, not a sympathetic revival of former times : 
or they have lived in an ideal world, as Shelley, — but 
then that world was their own creation, and entirely 



LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 9 

absorbed them : or they have believed in and repro- 
duced their own age, together with one long anterior, 
as Milton, — but then their older subject-matter was 
religion : or, in another way, as Shakespeare, they 
have recast all ages in their own mind ; or were barely 
conscious of the difference between the ages, as Chau- 
cer and Dante. But it will strike every reader how 
decidedly Scott's poetical conception of the past, and 
bis relations to the present, differ from those just 
enumerated. As a child of the critical eiijrhteenth 
century, and the son of a shrewd Scotch solicitor, 
Scott was, on one side, a born skeptic in romance, the 
Middle Ages, and Jacobitisra, — as a cadet of the Scotts 
of Harden, and a man of the strongest imaginative 
temperament, he was likewise a born believer. Now, 
not only his writings, which in the strictest sense re- 
produce himself, but his life and character, present a 
continual half-conscious attempt at a real and practi- 
cal compromise between these opposing elements. In 
the details, what struck his contemporaries was plain 
but genial common sense; in the whole, what strikes 
the later student is the predominance of the poetical 
impulse. Whilst the peculiar blending of the elements 
is what gives Scott his place in our literature, and 
renders him singularly interesting as a man, it cannot 
be concealed that it carried certain weaknesses with 
it : he had les defauts de ses qualites. And in this com- 
promise between past and present, romance and prose, 
which he attempted, beside that great and long-con- 
tinued error which ruined his worldly prosperity, and 
dispossessed him of the castle of his dreams, one may 
note some minor inconsistencies, which have exposed 
him to censure from those who did not observe the 
peculiarity of his nature. Thus, although naturally 
one of the most independent of men, we find him treat- 



10 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

ing the Prince Eegent with an almost servility of def- 
erence, when offered the Poet Laureateship ; although 
a Lowland Scot, only distantly and dimly sharing in 
Highland blood through a Cami^bell ancestor (the 
clan, we may remark in passing, towards which his 
writings show a marked dislike), when the Prince, 
then George IV, visited Edinburgh, Scott gave the 
pageantry of the reception a completely Celtic char- 
acter, — forgetting at once not only that national feud 
between Lowlander and Highlander which he had 
been the first to set forth before the whole world, but 
even the historical proprieties of the occasion. He 
appeared himself in Highland dress, whilst the heir 
of the Hanoverian line wore the '* Steiiart tartan !" 
Scott's Border sympathies, again, led him to regard 
the profession of arms with a somewhat extreme ad- 
miration; but when his son desires to enter the army, 
he regrets the choice. In his politics we observe 
the same uncertain direction; whilst feeling in the 
strongest way for the poor, and by nature hostile to 
the violence and unfairness of party, we find him ever 
and anon lowering himself to the petty interests of 
the Toryism of Edinburgh, or abetting the coarse re- 
pression of popular spirit which discredited the Ad- 
ministrations of the time : and then, with a fitter sense 
of his vocation in life, adding a '-so much for politics 
— about which, after all, my neighbors the Blackcocks 
know about as much as I do" (Lockhart's "Life of 
Scott," iii, 209; the edition of 1S56, in ten volumes, is 
that quoted). That the reader may understand the 
kind of character who will be presented to him, these 
points are noted here ; they will be illustrated by the 
details which follow. But is not Scott, in all this an- 
tithetically blended nature, shrewdness in details, ro- 
mance in the whole, — minor inconsistencies, with a 



LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 11 

general unity and individuality of character, — a per- 
fect type of the common sense combined with the 
ingenium perfervidiun Scotorum, a true representative 
of the great race amongst which it was the dearest 
pride of his heart to be numbered? 

I. 
*' Every Scotchman.*' says Sir Walter Scott in his 
brief Autobiography, •• has a pedigree." We need 
not trace his back in detail beyond his great-grand- 
father, the staunch old Jacobite known as Beardie, 
who died in 1729. Beardie's second son, Eobert, a 
Whig, drove and sold the cattle which had been the 
plunder of his reiving ancestors; at other times farm- 
ing the small estate of Sandy-knowe or Smailholme, 
midway between Melrose and Kelso. By marriage 
with a Haliburton, Eobert Scott became for a time pro- 
prietorof Dryburgh Abbey. The eldest son, Walter, 
born 1729, settled in Edinburgh as a '-Writer to the 
Signet ;" and in that city, after the loss of several in- 
fants, Walter, third son of six children who survived, 
was born, August 15, 1771. His mother, AnneJRuth- 
erford, was daughter to a distinguished professor of 
medicine in the University, and a lady of the ancient 
family of Swinton ; and '"joined to a light and happy 
temper of mind, a strong turn to study poetry and 
works of imagination." Beyond these indications, 
little is known of Scott's mother to support the pop- 
ular fancy which ascribes filial distinction to maternal 
qualities; in fact, the father, a man of fine but singular 
disposition, fills a far larger space iu the reminiscences 
of the poet's earlier years, and was. long after, painted 
by him with loving fidelity in " Eedgauntlet." A 
fever in infancy rendered Walter lame in his right 
leg, and he was sent for recovery to his grandfather 



12 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

Robert, at Sandj-knowe. From this place, where 
Scott was nursed for about two years, dated his earliest 
recollections. Tales of the Jacobite risings, and of 
Border life and its heroes, neither as yet too distant 
for genuine tradition, were soon taught him ; " Merrj^- 
men all," he says, "of the persuasion and calling of 
Eobin Hood and Little John ;" and one can imagine 
the romantic disguise under which the violent deeds 
of " auld Watt of Harden" and the rest, were pre- 
sented by family pride to the child who was to im- 
mortalize them. Visits to Bath and elsewhere were 
made for the sake of Walter's health, and he so far 
threw oif the weakness of limb that, until the early 
decay of his constitution, it hardlj^ disqualified him 
from any vigorous exercise. Scott's lameness, like 
Bj^ron's, impelled his eager and courageous disposi- 
tion to a more than average displaj^ of physical energy; 
one may trace to it, in some degree, the rather over- 
strained emphasis laid by Scott on field sports and 
volunteer drill whilst his strength lasted ; excess in 
which, not improbably, was one reason wh}' he found 
himself an old man before fifty. Ingenious excuses 
are never wanting to give the body more than its due 
share; and when there is activity of mind also, as in 
Scott and Byron, it takes its revenge in premature 
decay. On the other hand, the boy's lameness had a 
nobler result; giving him leisure for a large range of 
reading, — miscellaneous indeed, but lying in those 
imaginative regions, the air of which strengthens the 
higher nature within us. He entered the Grammar 
School of Edinburgh in 1778. A letter written by a 
gifted lady presents an excellent picture of the child 
as he was at six, — indeed, of Scott as he remained 
through life: " boy forever," in Shakespeare's phrase, 
with the lasting childhood and sensitiveness of genius. 



LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 13 

" I last night supped in Mr. Walter Scott's. He has 
the most extraordinary genius of a boy I ever saw. 
He was reading a poem to his mother when I went 
in. I made him read on ; it was the description of a 
shipwreck. His passion rose with the storm. He 
lifted his eyes and hands. There's the mast gone, says 
he; crash it goes ! — they loill all perish ! After his agi- 
tation, he turns to me : That is too melancholy ; I had 
better read you something more amusing. I preferred a 
little chat, and asked his opinion of Milton and other 
books he was reading, which he gave me wonder- 
fully. . . . When taken to bed Uist night, he told his 
aunt he liked that lady [Mrs. Cockburn, the writer], 
for 1 think she is a virtuoso like myself, — Bear Walter, 
saj^s Aunt Jenny, ivhat is a virtuoso f — .Do7i't ye know ? 
Why, it's one who wishes and will know everything^ 

Those about Scott may have been already im- 
pressed, like Mrs. Cockburn, with his mental energy 
and determination to "know everything." But in 
the Autobiography he adopts another tone, which re- 
appears in his later letters. He was conscious that 
industry had not come to- him without a struggle. 
About one of his brothers he remarks, that he had 
" the same determined indolence that marked us all.^ 
No description could, at first sight, appear less appli- 
cable to himself. If there be one constant attribute 
of real genius, it is vast capacity for and enjoyment 
of labor. Genius often makes us feel that it is almost 
synonymous with patience, as Buffbn and Eeynolds 
called it. And it would be difficult to find a man of 
genius whose recorded works, — never more than a por- 
tion of the man's whole work, — are more extensive 
and varied than Scott's. He had, in the highest de- 
gree, another charming quality, often, though not so 
essentially an attribute of intellectual excellence — 



14 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

Modesty. Hence, throughout his life he undervalued 
himself, and thought little of his own energy. Yet 
we cannot doubt that this -'determined indolence," 
like the irritability of temper which he so subdued 
that few suspected its existence, was a real element 
in his nature. At school (1T7S-1783), Scott's zeal for 
study is inferior to the ardor of Shelley ; he takes not 
the slightest interest in what is not only the most per- 
fect, but the most essentially '-romantic" of litera- 
tures. — that of Greece ; even in Latin going only far 
enough to set the highest value upon the modern verse 
of Buchanan, and after him, on Lucan and Claudian. 
He was satistied with a working knowledge of French, 
German, Italian, and Spanish. Perhaps the family 
failing expended itself in confining his studies to the 
circle marked out by strong creative impulse, the his- 
tory, manners, romances, and poetry of mediaeval and 
modern Europe. Looking back now at the result, the 
Poems and the Xovels, one is inclined to say that Scott 
in all this followed the imperious promptings of na- 
ture. This, however, was not his own judgment. He 
regretted nothing more bitterly than his want of the 
severe classical training. '* I forgot the very letters 
of the Greek alphabet," he says in the Autobiography 
of 1808, " a loss never to be repaired, considering 
what that language is, and who they were who em- 
ployed it in their compositions." And again, "I 
would at this moment give half the reputation I have 
had the good fortune to acquire, if by doing so I could 
rest the remaining part upon a sound foundation." 
Within the range noticed, however, his '• appetite for 
books was as ample and undiscriminating as it was 
indefatigable ; few ever read so much," he adds, " or 
to so little purpose." Spenser, Tasso's "Jerusalem" 
in the English, "above all, Bishop Percy's IJeliques of 



LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 15 

Ancient Poetry/' are specified ; and although throug-h- 
ont his life Scott exhibited a reluctance to employ his 
powerful mind on subjects requiring hard thought, 
and was disposed to defer any work upon which he 
was engaged to the last, yet in the main we may re- 
gard the "determined indolence'' as absorbed into 
the meditative atmosphere (if we may use the word) 
of the poetical nature : as the undersoil whence so 
many masterpieces of imaginative writing were des- 
tined to grow. There is a strong general likeness on 
this point between Scott and the greatest of his con- 
temporaries in poetry : and the words in which 
Wordsworth described himself would have borne an 
equal application to his friend : 



My whole life I have lived in pleasant thought, 
As if life's business were a summer mood. 



"My life," Scott himself says, in one of the most 
remarkable passages of his Diary (Dec. 27, 1825), 
"though not without its fits of waking and strong 
exertion, has been a sort of dream, sjDent in 

Chewing the cud of sweet and bitter fancy. 

I have worn a wishing-cap, the power of which has 
been to divert present griefs by a touch of the wand 
of imagination, and gild over the future by prospects 
more fair than can be i^alized." Scott's character 
was essentially formed and finished in early youth, 
and these words may be considered the key to his 
whole career and character. Worldly wisdom, love 
of social rank, passion for lands and goods; — these are 
the motives by which it has been often assumed that 
he was guided. Mr. Carlyle even appears in his re- 



IG LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

markable Essay to regard Scott as unentitled to the 
claim of greatness, because be did not throw his 
strength into grasping the problems of modern life or 
the eternal difficulties of human thought, — and treats 
him as an eminently genial and healthy man of the 
world, whose writings were rather pieces of skilful 
and rapid manufacture for the day, than likely to 
prove " heirlooms forever." But so " antithetically 
mixed " was his nature, that at the same time he was 
in the spirit hidden away with poetry and the past, 
and moving among romantic worlds of his own cre- 
ation. Viewed from one side, Scott, as printer and 
lawyer, with " a thread of the attornej" in him," as 
"laird" and man of societ}^, appears in unromantic 
contrast to most of his " brothers in immortal verse :" 
viewed from another, it may be doubted whether any 
of his contemporaries lived the life of the poet so com- 
pletely. 

A strong capacity for such work as his nature se- 
cretly preferred, and towards which he was uncon- 
sciously finding his way, marks the boyhood of Scott. 
This found its main exercise at first in a love for in- 
venting and relating marvellous tales which amounted 
to real passion. '^ Whole holidays were spent in this 
pastime, which continued for two or three years, and 
had, I believe, no small effect in directing the turn of 
my imagination to the chivalrous and romantic in 
poetry and prose." "He used to interest us," writes 
a lady who was then his playmate, " by telling us the 
visions, as he called them, which he had lying alone. 
. . . Child as I was, I could not help being highly de- 
lighted with his description of the glories he had 
seen. . . . Recollecting these descriptions," of which 
we cannot but regret that she preserved no memorial, 
" radiant as they were, I have often thought since, 



LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 17 

that there must have been a bias in his mind to su- 
perstition — the marvellous seemed to have such power 
over him, though the mere offspring of his own imagi- 
nation, that the expression of his face, habitually that 
of genuine benevolence, mingled with a shrewd inno- 
cent humor, changed greatly while he was speaking 
of these things, and showed a deep intenseness of feel- 
ing, as if he were awed even by his own recital." 
Scott, as he was throughout life, is again before us in 
this little delineation ; the kindness, the superstition, 
the shrewdness: and one already sees '' Waverley" 
and "Lammermoor" in their infancy. 

Meanwhile that other element of poetry which is 
only second in Scott's writings to the picture of hu- 
man life, — the natural landscape, — began to assert its 
influence over him. Actors were thronging fast with- 
in the theatre of his imagination ; the first sketches of 
the background and scenery for the drama were now 
supplied. From a visit to Kelso, " the most beauti- 
ful, if not the most romantic village in Scotland," 
Scott traced his earliest consciousness of the magic of 
Nature. Wordsworth's passion was for 

the Visions of the hills 
And Souls of lonely places. 

The passion of Scott differed from this through the 
leading place which historical memories held in his 
heart. " The romantic feelings w^hich I have de- 
scribed as predominating in my mind gradually rested 
upon and associated themselves with the grand fea- 
tures of the landscape around me ; and the historical 
incidents or traditional legends connected with many 
of them gave to my admiration a sort of intense im- 
pression of reverence, which at times made my heart 
feel too big for its bosom. From this time the love of 



18 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

natural beauty, more especially when combined with 
ancient ruins, or remains of our fathers' piety or splen- 
dor, became with me an insatiable passion, which I 
would willingly have gratified by travelling over half 
the globe.'' Scott's transfer from the Edinburgh High 
School to the College (1TS3-17S6), probably gave him 
the first freedom to indulge this impulse within bounds 
which, though narrow in themselves, were of inex- 
haustible interest to his sj'mpathetic imagination. 
Without ''travelling over half the globe" he could 
create a i*ealm of his own, sufficient for himself and 
for his readers. It is astonishing to look at the map, 
and observe within how small a radius from Edin- 
burgh the hundred little places lie which he has made 
familiar names throughout the whole civilized world. 
We have noticed that Scott's father (with himself in 
youth), is painted in --Eedgauntlet." Nothing was 
ever better contrasted in a romance than these two 
characters; and one sees that the real Alan Fairford 
was already beginning at college those adventurous 
ways which may have made the old Writer to the Sig- 
net feel that the wild moss-trooping blood of Harden 
was once more at work within the veins of his gallant 
boy. A wise confidence left Walter free. He wan- 
dered for days together over the historical sites of the 
neighborhood, and when at home, in lieu of devotion 
to the prosaic mysteries of the Scottish law, was able 
to please his fancy by founding that collection of way- 
side songs and historical relics which filled so large a 
space in the innocent happiness of his after-years, and 
was not less a necessary of life to him than his cabi- 
net of rocks and minerals is to the geologist. 

The mode in which Scott observed ^'ature is 
strictly parallel to his representation of human life. 
As he rarely enters into the depths of character, pre- 



LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 19 

ferring to exhibit it through action, and painting 
rather the great general features of an age than 
dwelling on the details for their own sake, so he 
mainly deals with the landscape; two or three ad- 
mirable pictures excepted. Compare his descriptions 
with those hy Wordsworth, Keats, or Shelley, and 
the difference in regard to the points noted will be 
felt at once. Scott was aware of this. ''I was un- 
able." says the Autobiography, '• with the eye of a 
painter to dissect the various parts of the scene, to 
comprehend how the one bore upon the other. . . . 
I have never, indeed, bt;en capable of doing this with 
precision or nicety." A curious testimony is borne 
to the truth of this remark by Scott's failure (like 
Goethe's) to master even the rudiments of landscape 
drawing. '-Even the humble ambition, which I long 
cherished, of making sketches of those places which 
interested me, from a defect of eye or of hand was 
totally ineffectual." But this absence of power over 
landscape forms was compensated for by a singularly 
fine perception of color, examples of which have been 
given by ^r. Euskin in the interesting criticisms on 
Scott contained in his •• Modern Painters." Scott's 
almost total want of ear for music was a calamity 
which he shared with a large number of great poets; 
the strong sense of the melody in words and the 
harmonies of rhythm appearing to leave no space in 
their organization for inarticulate music. 

— Heard melodies are sweet, but those anhear-i 
Are sweeter ; 

if true at all, is true only of the poet. 

Beside the irresistible impulse which directed 
Scott's reading to •• romantic" and poetical literature, 
to story-telling, and to country wanderings, he was 



20 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

seriously impeded by illness from pursuing his college 
studies. And by the time the x\cademical course was 
concluded, the passion which governed his youth, 
and perhaps secretly colored the complexion of his 
future life, had already fallen upon him. Little has 
been told of this early love : force of feeling, and 
force to repress the signs of feeling, are two of the 
principal elements in Scott's character; he under- 
goes evil with a pathetic simplicity; he suffers in 
silence. From what, however, we can learn, it is 
Datural to read in the '• love that never found his 
earthly close " the true source of that peculiar shade 
of pensive melancholy which runs like a silver thread 
through almost everything he wrote, is heard as a 
'•'far-off ^olian note" in all his poetry, and breaks 
out at last during his later years of misfortune with 
strange power in his " Journal." This strong passion 
kept him safe from " the ambush of young days," and 
threw over his whole life the halo of a singular pur- 
ity. Meantime the first result was probably to rec- 
oncile him to work for his livelihood, and even pre- 
pare for following his father's profession, — alien from 
Scott's nature as a conveyancer's office must have 
been. He was bound apprentice for four years (1786- 
1790). An acquaintance with Scottish law, which he 
used with effect in some of his novels, was the chief 
fruit of this apprenticeship; for we can hardly reckon 
as a gain that half-introduction to business habits on 
which he afterwards relied with so fatal a security. 
It was not, however, as a '-Writer to the Signet" 
that Scott finally entered the law (1792); having 
been turned towards the more liberal career of an 
Advocate by the influence of the gently-born intel- 
lectual society with which he now became familiar. 
Burns, of whom he has l^t a striking description, he 



LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 21 

only saw; but with most or all of the remainiDg 
eminent Scotchmen of the time he was acquainted. 
Clerk of Eldin, Corehouse, JeffreT, and before long 
the dearest of his early friends. William Erskine. are 
prominent amongst many other names; for men lived 
together then after the most social fashion in Edin- 
burgh (that excellent feature in life which is lost 
when capital cities grow large), and clubs and con- 
viviality of all kinds abounded. This was a brilliaat 
stage in Scott's career; perhaps the most essentially 
happy: love, fearful yet warm with hope; open, 
numerous, and equal friendships; the first introduc- 
tion to the literature most congenial to his nature, 
that of Germany; last, not least, the first sight of 
the Scottish Highlands. These regions, the romantic 
manners of which were to be so brightly painted in 
his writings, by one of the curious contrasts which 
are frequent in his life, he entered on a leoral visit to 
evict certain Maclarens; — as he was afterwards the 
first to carry a gig, Mr. Carlyle's symbol of modem 
'• respectability,'' into the depths of Liddesdale. 

This district, under the name of which the best of 
the Scottish Marches are apparently included, lay 
within view of Scott's future home, and was the true 
nursing-ground of his genius. Great as he is in 
describing scenes from Scottish history, great in his 
pictures of the Highlands, great in delineating life in 
Edinburgh, or Perth, or Glasgow, he seems to move 
with the largest and freest step, when his tale or 
song is of the Border. For several successive years 
(1792-1798) he appears to have made excursions 
thither (partially under the excuse of professional 
business), when he explored the wild recesses, and 
observed the wilder life of a race who had not yet 
been civilized into uniformity: drinking in enjoy- 



^2 LIFE or SIS WALTER SCOTT. 

ment at everr pore, •• feeling his life/' as Words- 
worth savs of the child, "in every limb;" and as the 
friend who guided him through the land truly ob- 
servoi. makin' hhnsdl a the time. This friend, ALr. 
Shortreed, was of no small value to Scott. Already 
he t»egan to show one attribute of genins, that of 
attracting others to co-operate with him. The old 
ballads, in collecting which he was assiste<d by Short- 
reed. formed the basis of the first book in which Scott 
displayed his originality; and we soon after find that 
he gained similar aid from Dr. Elliott. Messrs. Skene, 
Bitson, Leyden, and finally from Mr. Train, who pro- 
vided some of the most effective materials for the 
Xovels, and plays an important though hidden part 
through Scott's life. 

This was the time when the shock of the French 
Eevolution recoiled with the greatest force upon the 
country. England had joined that monarchical 
alliance which aimed at compelling France to restore 
the or«ier of things lately swept away, which had 
succeeded only in uniting France as one man against 
her invaders, and which now, in turn, feared reveng- 
ing invasion from the armies of the Eepublic. It is 
well known how powerfully and diversely the stir- 
ring politics of the time affected thinking men in these 
islands. The movement which was inspiration to 
Wordsworth, was reaction to Scott. It converted 
the poetical Jacobitism which was part of his imagi- 
native inheritance from older days into a fervent 
Toryism. This ardor impelled him now (1797) to 
take the lead in forming a body of Volunteer Cav- 
alry, for which the political creed then dominant in 
Scotland afforded him ready followers. Something 
also of Scott's traditional interest in matters relating 
to war blended with his patriotic energy; and even 



LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 23 

tbe wish to prove, despite of nature, that lameness 
was no hindrance to phj'sical activit}', had its part 
in the rather excessive zeal with which for some 
years he threw himself into this mimic and (happily) 
bloodless campaigning, "With similar fervency he 
entered into the politics of the day. But politics, 
like poetry, must be studied as an art with the best 
powers of the mind, if a man is to reach valid con- 
clusions, or show himself a practical statesman- and 
as Scott; throughout his career, hardly gave to polit- 
ical questions more than the leisure moments of a 
powerful mind, there is no reason for wonder if this 
be not the most satisfactory feature in his life, nor 
one which needs detain the biographer. Scott's in- 
sight failed him here ; and, as with his study of the 
law, the only valuable fruit of the years devoted to 
cavalry drill was a certain accuracy, — contested of 
course by professional critics, — in his descriptions of 
warfare. It may be suspected that he and Gibbon 
pleased themselves with finding, in the vividness of 
their narratives of battle, some tangible result from 
months wasted in camp. Genius, however, returns 
always to its natural track, and abandons imperfect 
interests. But Scott was as yet totally unaware of 
his proper vocation. Already indeed love had drawn 
from him a few lines of exquisitely tender sadness: 
he had translated the ballad '-Lenore" from the Ger- 
man of Biirger, and may have been at work upon 
Goethe's early drama '"Goetz;" yet he almost prided 
himself upon contempt of literature as a man's work 
in life. How singular is this utter self-unconscious- 
ness I Here was the man who was to turn the minds 
of a whole nation to the picturesque and romantic 
side of poetry. He was to restore an ideal loyalty , 
to the later Stuarts. He was to make the Middle 



24 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

Ages live once more. But, engrossed as he was at 
this time by foreign revolutions, no one in Edin- 
burgh could have known less than the youthful Ad- 
vocate of the change, itself hardly less than a revolu- 
tion, which he was destined to work in the thoughts 
and sentiments of his fellow-creatures. 

II. 

We now approach the second step in Scott's life. 
In the course of 1796 the long dream of youthful love 
was over. Little has been told, perhaps little was 
divulged, of the reasons for the final decision ; tlie 
lines above alluded to (those "To a Violet" in the 
following collection), cannot be regarded as strict 
evidence to the facts; and Scott's stern habit of re- 
pression where he felt most, has concealed from us 
not only what he was compelled to bear, but how he 
bore it. He '^ had his dark hour" during a solitary 
ride in Perthshire; the wise sympathy of a friend 
(afterwards Countess of Purgstall) was some little 
aid; but the wound bled inwardly, and the evidence 
appears strong, that, like all passion suppressed in 
deference to ideas of manliness or philosophy, this 
worked in him Avith a secret fever. However these 
things may have been, next year he married (Dec, 
1797) a pretty Mdlle. Charpentier (daughter to a 
French lady, one of the roj^alist emigrants) whom he 
met and wooed at the little watering-place, Gilshxnd, 
in Cumberland; a village which he afterwards de- 
scribed in his only novel of contemporary life, the 
tragic "St. Eonan's Well." A very brief acquaint- 
ance preceded their engagement; it is probable that 
the congruity of sentiment and taste between them 
..was comparatively slight; and at the distance of 
"sixty years since" and more, it may be allowable 



LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 25 

to add that although attended by considerable happi- 
ness, faithful attachment on his wife's part, and much 
that gave a charm to life, this marriage does not ap- 
pear to have fully satisfied the poet's inner nature. 

We are here referring to that more hidden and 
more sensitive side of existence which it is the fate — 
not altogether the happier fate — of the poet to live; 
which makes the difference between him and other 
men; and to trace which, as delicately but firmly as 
we may, is the essential object of the biographer. 
But it is not meant that Scott would have been con- 
scious of anything incomplete in this chapter of his 
story. Not only did he find the substantial blessings 
of home in his marriage, but it incidentally led him 
to the felicity, inferior to that alone^ of practically 
discovering his own work in life. He now (1798) 
took a house in Castle Street, Edinburgh, and a cot- 
tasre at Lasswade, within the northeastern end of 
Eskdale. The first was for his attendance at the bar, 
where he "swept the boards of the Outer House," 
waiting for briefs which rarely came; and enjoying 
to the full the cheery convivialities and frank good- 
fellowship of his town friends. Meantime, his heart 
was gradually withdrawn to Lasswade, where he 
could live in the past with poetry and histoiy ; where 
the old Scottish memories to which Burns himself 
was not attached with more devoted passion, were 
around him ; where, also, began his friendship with 
the chief house of his clan. To the three peers who 
bore the title of Buccleuch between this time and his 
death, especially to Charles, fourth duke, Scott was 
attracted by the whole force of his nature: not onl^^ 
respecting them with feudal devotion as heads of his 
blood and family, but loving them as men who sym- 
pathized deeply with him in their views of life, re- 



26 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

ligion, politics, relations between rich and poor, home- 
pursuits and affections; and who systematically used 
great wealth and power for the happiness of their 
friends and dependents. There are no pages in Scott's 
life more pleasing than those which paint his intimacy 
with this truly noble family group; here he carried 
out with the greatest success his poetical identifica- 
tion between the old world and the new; and to him, 
in turn, the family name owes a distinction beyond 
that of Montmorency, Dalberg, or Howard. Under 
these and other combining influences Scott now added 
to the ancient Border Ballads, which he was collect- 
ing, his own original poems, some, written for Lewis's 
Tales of Wonder, based on German sentiment; others 
founded upon the native songs, to which he gave a 
wider plan with consummate taste. He printed (1799) 
his translation from Goethe's play, and becoming ac- 
quainted with Ellis, Eitson, Heber, and others of that 
excellent band of scholars by whom our knowledge 
of the Middle Ages was placed upon a sure footing, 
turned resolutely to the study of mediggval imagi- 
native literature, which (1802) issued in the "Border 
Minstrelsy." 

This book marks the great crisis in Scott's life. 
Henceforth, even if unconsciously to himself, his real 
work is literature. The publication was not only the 
first that made his name known, but led Scott into 
what proved the most serious business transaction of 
his life. Many years before he had made friends with 
James Ballantyne, a young man of whose ability and 
disposition he thought highly. Ballantyne printed 
the "Minstrelsy;" at Scott's advice he established a 
house in Edinburgh; and by 1805 the two became 
partners in trade. Before long, taking a younger 
brother, John, into the concern, they added a pub- 



LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 27 

lishing house to the printing ; and Scott's fortune and 
fall were in due time the result. This partnership is 
on all accounts the least agreeable chapter in Scott's 
life; it is only of interest now as illustrating his 
character. The essence of that character has been 
defined as an attempt at a practical, not less than at 
an imaginative compromise between past and pres- 
ent, — between prose (one might almost say) and po- 
etry ; ideals realized and realities idealized. The 
trade-partnership fatally partook in this perilous and 
delicate compromise. Beside the final loss of wealth 
and health, Scott's memory has been hence exposed 
to some misinterpretation. In face of the result, and 
the clear proofs how it came to pass, he has received 
almost equal honors for his practical sense and for his 
greatness in romantic literature. Two men, in fact, 
are painted in the one Scott of the " Biography ;" the 
able man of the world in his ofiice, and the poet in 
his study ; giving, with equal mastery and ease, an 
hour to verse and an hour to business, and appearing 
to his friends meantime as the Scottish gentleman of 
property. Now, such a compound being as this could 
hardly have existed. It is against nature; and, if the 
estimate here given be correct, there is no nature 
which it is less like than Scott's. Where the poetical 
character truly exists, it always predominates; it 
cannot put off the poet like a dress, and assume the 
lawyer or the laird ; it " moveth altogether, if it move 
at all." This point must be insisted on, because it is 
vital to understanding the man and his work. The 
very specialty of Scott is, not that he presented the 
ideal gentleman just described, who wrote poetry and 
novels as pastime, and entered into business like a 
shrewd Scotchman who knew the worth of money, 
but that he valued wealth in order to embody in 



28 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

visible form his inner world of romance, and lived 
more completely within the circle of his creations 
than any of his contemporaries. This poetical tem- 
perament has its perils, and might have driven a less 
healthy nature into injurious isolation and eccen- 
tricity. But, as a man of eminently sane mind and 
genial disposition, and fortified by the training of his 
early years, Scott had not to go out of the world, as 
it were, in order to " idealize realities." The common 
duties of life glowed into romance for him ; his friends, 
Lowland and Highland, were dear not only in them- 
selves, but as representatives of the two historical 
races of the land; his estate, when he bought one, 
was rather an inclosure of ancient associations, a 
park of poetry, if the phrase may be allowed, deco- 
rated with " a romance in stone and lime," than what 
the Lords of Harden and Bowhill would have looked 
on as landed property. 

The picture here drawn, although different from 
the estimate often taken of Scott, rests upon the evi- 
dence of his writings, and of the copious materials 
contained in the Biography, and not only answers to 
what we read of his sentiments and mode of thought, 
conscious or unconscious, but can alone explain how 
he came to be the author of the poems and the novels. 
Mr. Lockhart describes him as the finished man of 
the world. Mr. Carlyle, again, seems to speak of 
him as, in the main, a manufacturer of hasty books 
for the purj^ose of making money and a landed estate 
to rival neighboring country-gentlemen. Both views 
appear to be unintentionally unjust to Scott, and dis- 
cordant with his recorded character; and both fail 
equally to explain how such imaginative writing as 
his in prose and verse had any room to come into 
being. Some great artists, we read, have enjoyed the 



LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 29 

possession of wealth. Others have been gratified by 
social position. But in what art has the love of 
money, or the love of rank, ever been the root of 
masterpieces ? Who has moved the world with these 
levers ? You cannot grow poetry without the poeti- 
cal soil. If at first sight this be less visible in Scott 
than in men like Eyron or Shelley, may not the reason 
be, not that the nature of the poet was absent; but 
that it was more closely and curiously combined with 
the man of common life than in others? The writer, 
at least, desires to submit this view as the possible 
solution of a diflScult problem. 

Walter Scott, it will probably be agreed, ranks 
among the great of our race^ both as a writer and as 
a man ; but in his portrait, as in every true portrait, 
there are shadows. Some weakness is blended inti- 
mately with his strength; as we have noticed, he 
cannot escape " the weak side of his gifts." His wish 
was certainly to conceal his inner or poetical mind 
from the world. Perhaps he sometimes concealed it 
from himself. One fallacy hence arising (to return 
now to his commercial affairs), was an overestimate 
of his practical powers. " From beginning to end, 
he piqued himself on being a man of business." 
Against this it is probably enough to set the fact, 
that the books of his house were never fairly bal- 
anced till they were in the hands of his creditors. 
That the Ballantyne brothers had, each in his way, 
equally vague ideas on the matter, was known per- 
fectly to Scott, who by 1812 found himself involved 
in his first difficulties. Then the vast success of the 
Novels once more floated the house : but althoup:h 
the partnership was enlarged by the admission of a 
really able commercial man. Constable the publisher, 
the reckless spirit which his adventurous nature 



30 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

brouglit with him, combined with the peculiar money- 
difficulties of 1825, only hastened the concluding bank- 
ruptcy of 1826. These twenty years of business, un- 
sound from the outset, have supplied materials for a 
long dispute, with whom the fault justly rested. But 
enough has been here stated to explain the general 
case; we need not go further into a matter of which, 
with even more than usual truth, one might say that 
both sides were honestly wrong, and all, partners in 
a catastrophe for which all were responsible. The 
so-called men of business and plain common sense, as we 
daily see, were not one atom more truly entitled to 
those epithets than the romantic Poet. But, what 
had the " Ariosto of the North " to do in concerns 
like this? 

A probable element in the ultimate failure of the 
House of Ballantyne and Company was the fact that 
the partner with capital sedulously concealed himself 
from the public. The news that Scott was one of the 
firm startled the world far more than the news that 
he was the sole author of the " Waverley Novels.'^ It 
is obvious in how many ways this concealment must 
have hampered business. One reason of it was a cer- 
tain pleasure in mystery, inherent in Scott's nature, 
and displa^^ed also when " Triermain " and "Harold" 
were published. The wish was, that both of these 
poems should be taken for the work of his friend Er- 
skiue. In case of the Novels, however, the desire to 
escape the nuisance of commonplace praise and face- 
flattery was a further inducement. It was not so 
wise a motive that co-operated to prompt the com- 
mercial incognito. It might have been expected that 
he would have been led to avoid this by natural 
shrewdness, and " the thread of the attorney in him." 
But the peculiarity of Scott is that something dream- 



LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 31 

like and imaginative, together with something prac- 
tical and prosaic, unites in all the more important 
phases of his life; past and present, romance and 
reality, meet in him at once; he is in the world, and 
not in it, as it were, at the same time; he is almost 
too unselfconscious. The favorable side of this 
strangelj^ balanced nature has been already indi- 
cated; it gave us in his Poems and ISTovels together 
the most brilliant and the most diversified " spectacle 
of human life" which we have had since Shakes- 
peare ; it gave Scott himself many years of pure and 
peculiar happiness. On the other hand, wo have the 
failure, after long-continued struggles, of his material 
prosperity', and (closely connected with this) the nar- 
row and even unjust view which he always took, or 
rather, took always in public, of literature and his 
own share in it. He could not fully work out his 
ideal of life, however we interpret it ; his career has 
many curious inconsistencies. There is nothing which 
Mr. Lockhart notes more pointedlj' than Scott's aver- 
sion from what is called "literature as a profession." 
He indorses with approval, as Scott's own view, the 
words of a friend, who wrote in 1799 to encourage 
him in perseverance at the bar, "I rather think men 
of business have produced as good poetry in their by- 
hours as the professed regulars;" an assertion of 
which (it need hardly be added) the writer does not 
furnish any proof. To the same effect it is added 
(1815) "that Scott never considered any amount of 
literary distinction as entitled to be spoken of in the 
same breath with master}^ in the higher departments 
of practical life. To have done things worthy to be 
written, was in his eyes a dignity to which no man 
made any approach, who had only written things 
worthy to bo read;" and the steam-engine, safety- 



32 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

lamp, and campaigns of the Dake of Wellington are 
presently named as examples. 

There can be no doubt that the biographer has 
here truly reported, not merely what he admired 
Scott for thinking, but Scott's own conscious idea re- 
garding his life. And if this had been the whole 
truth, there can equally be no doubt that we should 
never have had a " Marmion '' or a " Bride of Lam- 
mermoor." Indeed, except as the opinion of so dis- 
tinguished a man as Scott, it would hardly deserve 
examination. For what human being would seriously 
pretend to compare with each other things so gener- 
ically different as a battle, a scientific invention, and 
a song ? In what balances should we weigh " Othello " 
and Trafalgar, the commercial policy of Sir Eobert 
Peel and " The Advancement of Learning," — or de- 
cide which has been of most value to England ? How 
is the one less a " deed " than the other ? Scott's pro- 
found modesty asto his own genius was undoubtedly 
one motive in his estimate of literature ; but even 
this could not have blinded so sensible a man to its 
untenability, had he not been swayed by something 
of that instinct for living an old-world life in the 
present, which lay at the root of his character. We 
have here one of his practical anachronism?. He 
puts himself in the place of the Minstrel of the 
" Lay " at Newark; he leans to the time when hands 
were more honored, at least more powerful than 
brains; he wavers in the delicate compromise which 
was to have united the spirit of Scott of Harden 
and Scott of Abbotsford. A similar sentiment gov- 
erns his aversion from " literature as a profession." 
Much might be said for and against this feeling; yet 
it is hardly more true of Goldsmith, Southey, or 
Thackeray, that they made letters their profession, 



LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 33 

than of Walter Scott. Few men whose work can be 
properly classed as literature have written so much 
or so continuously; none, i^robably, have earned more 
by their writings. What he actually was as a man 
of business, meanwhile, is recorded in his life. What 
he was as a lawyer has been described by himself. 
"My profession and I'' (by 1800) "came to stand 
nearly upon the footing which honest Slender con- 
soled himself on having established with Mistress Ann 
Page, There was no great love between us at the begin- 
ning, and it pleased heaven to decrease it on further ac- 
guaintancey In fiact, at the point where we left the 
narrative, Scott, already enriched by his marriage, 
was about to obtain the sheriff-deputeship of Sel- 
kirkshire; and soon after (1806) he left the bar for 
a Clerkship of Session; offices which together gave 
him a good income, and had the additional advantage 
of duties that, except a certain amount of attendance 
and of rapid and accurate penmanship, were almost 
nominal. The criticism to which these pleasant places 
seem to have exposed Scott from those who did not 
share in his political devotion to the house of Dundas, 
then paramount in Scotland, was unfair; but one 
cannot say that he is entitled to more than the praise 
of prudence for obtaining ease and leisure by this 
ancient and easy method : 

Deus nobis hasc otia fecit I 

And, in fact, before the salary from the clerkship, 
held at first in reversion, fell in, the sale of Scott's 
works was already beginning, both directly in itself 
and indirectly through his partnership with the Bal- 
lantynes, to surpass, as it before long reduced to com- 
parative insignificance, any sources of revenue, — ex- 

2 



34 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

cept those which he thus derived from the ''profes- 
sion of literature/' 

Enough, however, has heen said on Scott's practi- 
cal, though morally blameless, inconsistency in this 
section of his career. Important as the matter of 
income was for many years to his healthy enjoyment 
of existence, and at last in giving a direction to his 
writing, its real importance lies in that to which we 
gladly turn, — that he was thus enabled to live the 
life for which he had been planned by Nature. Is 
not what is most desirable for man contained in this, 
when "Nature's holy plan" happens to be such as 
she marked out for Scott? There are several types 
of a noble life, some of which may be loftier or more 
striking than his; yet we do not see how he could 
have done his peculiar work otherwise. One of the 
masters in the highest human knowledge — the science 
of man's nature — defined the perfection of life as "the 
serene exercise of thought " (we must thus paraphrase 
his own word Theoria), "in a state of independence, 
and leisure, and security so far as man may attain it, 
together with a complete measure of his days; for 
nothing incomplete can enter into blessedness. Such 
a life," he however adds, "would be in itself above 
the height of Immanity.'' Perhaps Wordsworth ap- 
proached this ideal nearer than any distinguished 
man of Scott's generation, and it is easy to see the 
features in w^hich Scott fell short; yet on the whole, 
if the estimate here taken be just, he also was not far 
from the lofty standard of Aristotle. 

We return to trace Scott's career; fortunate, if we 
have trul}^ and distinctlj^ traced what manner of man 
he was; for it is only if we feel this, that Mr. Lock- 
hart's detailed narrative of his lile, the interest of 
which cannot be transferred to an abridgment, gains 



LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 35 

its fullest charm and significance. Some contempo- 
rary poets now became friends of Scott; he had only 
seen Burns as a boy, and it is curious that, closely as 
their lines met in some jDoints, Burns has left no sign 
of influence on Scott's writings. A greater effect 
was produced by his intercourse with Wordsworth, 
whose elevation and simplicity of mind impressed 
Scott with a sense of his predominance, not the less 
striking because it was not consciously avowed. The 
same tacit recognition is traceable in Byron ; one 
seems also to find it among all Wordsworth's contem- 
poraries in verse; they know that he is the head of 
the family. '' Differing from him in very many 
points of taste," writes Scott in 1820, " I do not know 
a man more to be venerated for uprightness of heart 
and loftiness of genius.'' Wordsworth, in turn, has re- 
corded his estimate of Scott's power as a poet in some 
memorable verses, his feeling for the man in an early 
letter: ^'Your sincere friend, for such I will call my- 
self, though slow to use a word of such solemn mean- 
ing to any one " (ii, 167). Scott had for some years 
been sheriff of Selkirkshire; and that he might live 
within the district ho now (1804) moved to Ashestiel, 
a single house within the old Ettrick Forest, upon the 
banks of Tweed, not much above its junction with 
Yarrow. "The river itself is separated from the 
high bank on which the house stands only by a nar- 
row meadow of the richest verdure. OjDposite, and 
all around, are the green hills. The valley there is 
narrow, and the aspect in every direction is that of 
perfect pastoral repose/' " Not equal in picturesque 
beauty to the banks of Clyde," says Scott himself, 
" but so sequestered, so simple, and so solitary, that 
it seems just to have beauty enough to delight its in- 
habitants." And again, as a crowning recommenda- 



36 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

tion, he describes Ashestiel to his friend the distin- 
guished antiquary, Mr. G. Ellis: "In the very centre 
of the ancient Eeged," otherwise known as the Scoto- 
British realm of Strathclj^de. These passages are 
extracted, because the general descriptions apply also 
to the scenery of Abbotsford, except that the land- 
scape is there wider, and more bare, and because they 
indicate one dominant motive in Scott's mind. The 
presence of ancient national associations was pre- 
cisely the point which determined his choice of prop- 
erty; the genius loci which, with an overpowering 
influence, bound him all his life to the Border, and 
led him there from Itah" to die. 

By this time, through study, the collection of trar 
ditions, experience of men high or low in rank, soli- 
tary thought and imaginative vision, almost all the 
materials on which Scott was to work were ready. 
When the first fruits of this long preparation ap- 
peared in the "Lay of the Last Minstrel" (1805), its 
success was not less surprising to the author than to 
the public. Begun as a ballad on a large scale to please 
Lady Dalkeith, gradually moulded into a metrical 
romance^ or " Waverley Novel" in verse, and inter- 
spersed with those allusive transitional pieces which 
no other English poet has managed so gracefully, 
binding past and present together in one, Scott had 
here unconsciously put his ideal of life into form, and 
fairly " found himself" " Marmion," the most power- 
ful of the poems, followed in 1808; when also Scott 
published an elaborate edition of Dryden. Some 
similar work in the way of skilful editing or compil- 
ing he almost always had on hand ; he did as much 
thus for students as if he had not, at the same time, 
been the Scott who, in Wordsworth's phrase, was "the 
whole world's darling." " Labor," he said himself, "is 



LIFE OP SIR WALTER SCOTT. 37 

absolutely the charter by which we hold existence." 
Great regularity, with perfect order and neatness in 
the arrangements of his library, assisted him in ac- 
complishing so much. Eising at six, he " broke the 
neck of the day's work " before breakfast ; soon after 
noon, he was on his horse; outdoor employment and 
conversation completed the day; but though study 
was not resumed, the eye and the mind of such a man 
were never idle. He knew when he had finished his 
work; put his best into it, and had done: was in 
good humor with all his tasks, and thought little of 
them when finished. So curiously had the " deter- 
mined indolence" of his nature been conquered by 
the imperious force of creative imagination ! During 
the next year or two we find him planning the 
" Quarterly Eeview;" active in encouraging Mr. H. 
Siddons and a younger theatrical friend, Mr. D. Terry, 
on the stage; active also in his interest in the war 
against Napoleon, and (less felicitously) engaged in 
local politics; then, publishing the '^Lady of the 
Lake." *' Don Eoderick," unsuccessful in its attempt 
to blend the past history of Spain with the interests 
of the Peninsular War, followed (1811); "Trier- 
main/' and " Eokeby," the scene of which is laid 
within the lands of the most valued friend of Scott's 
middle life, Mr. Morritt, in 1813; the " Lord of the 
Isles" (1815), and " Harold" (1817), complete the list 
of Poems. 

Some general remarks on Scott's style as a writer 
have been reserved for the notice of his Novels. 
These have naturally overshadowed his fame as a 
poet; they are more singularly and strikingly origi- 
nal — more unique in literature ; and the form of the 
prose story, admitting readily of narrative details, 
and allowing the author to explain remote allusions 



38 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

as he advances, was more capable of giving free play 
for Scott's tastes and materials, than poetry, however 
irregular in its structure. Hence he did not make 
himself quite so much at home in his Poems. Per- 
haps they depend a little too much on archasology; 
the ancient manners, dresses, and customs painted 
occasionally compete in interest with the delineation 
of human character; those marvellous scenes from 
common life which are true in all ages, or those 
sketches of contemporary manners, which Scott has 
employed with such skill and power to counterpoise 
the antiquarian element in the Novels, could hardly 
find a place in verse. He has indeed given us some- 
thing of this kind in the beautiful Introductions to 
the "Lay" and " Marmion," and, less successfully, 
though even here with much grace, in '^ Triermain;" 
but they are not wrought up into a whole; they do 
not form an integral portion of the poem. On the 
other hand, the metrical descriptions of scenery, if 
not more picturesque and vivid than those of the ro- 
mances, tell more forcibly; they also relieve the nar- 
rative, by allowing the writer's own thoughts and 
interests to touch our hearts : an expedient used 
by Scott with singular skill. The ** Edinburgh" of 
"Marmion" is a splendid example; but others are 
scattered through the less familiarly known poems, 
which, it is hoped, will in this edition find a fresh 
circle of readers, who are little likely to regret the 
study. 

Scott's incompleteness of style, which is more in- 
jurious to poetry than to prose, his "careless glance 
and reckless rhyme," have been alleged by a great 
writer of our time as one reason why he is now less 
popular as a poet than he was in his own day, when 
from two to three thousand copies of his metrical ro- 



LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 39 

mances were yearly sold. Beside these faults, which 
are visible almost everj^where, the charge that he 
wants depth and penetrative insight, has been often 
brought- He does not " wrestle with the mystery 
of existence," it is said ; he docs not try to solve the 
problems of human life. Scott, could he have fore- 
seen this criticism, would probably not have been 
very careful to answer it. He might have allowed 
its correctness, and said that one man might have 
this work to do, but his was another. High and en- 
during pleasure, however conveyed, is the end of 
poetry. '' Othello " gives this by its profound display 
of tragic passion. "Paradise Lost" gives it by its 
religious sublimity: "Childe Harold" by its medita- 
tive picturesqueness: the ^^Lay" by its brilliant de- 
lineation of ancient life and manners. These are but 
scanty samples of the vast range of poetry. In that 
house are many mansions. All poets ma}^ be seers 
and teachers; but some teach directlj^ others by a 
less ostensible and larger process. Scott never lays 
bare the workings of his mind, like Goethe or Shelley; 
he does not draw out the moral of the landscape, like 
Wordsworth; rather, after the fashion of Homer and 
the writers of the ages before criticism, he presents 
a scene, and leaves it to work its own effect on the 
reader. His most perfect and lovely poems, the short 
songs which occur scattered through the metrical or 
the prose narratives, are excellent instances. He is 
the most unselfconscious of our modern poets; per- 
haps, of all our poets; the difference in this respect 
between him and his friends Byron and VYordsworth 
is like a difference of centuries. If they give us the 
inner spirit of modern life, or of nature, enter into 
our perplexities, or probe our deeper passions, Scott 
has a dramatic faculty not less delightful and precious. 



40 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

He hence attained eminent success in one of the rarest 
and most difficult aims of Poetry, — sustained vigor, 
clearness, and interest in narration. If we reckon 
up the poets of the world, we may be surprised to find 
how very few (dramatists not included) have accom- 
plished this, and may be hence led to estimate Scott's 
rank in his art more justly. One looks through the 
English poetry of the first half of the century in 
vain, unless it be here and there indicated in Keats, 
for such a power of vividly throwing himself into 
others as that of Scott. His contemporaries, Crabbe 
excepted, paint emotions. He paints men when 
strongly moved. They draw the moral ; but be can 
invent the fable. It w^ould be rash to try to strike a 
balance between men, each so great in his own w^ay; 
the picture of one could not be painted with the 
other's palette; all are first-rate in their kind; and 
every reader can choose the style which gives him 
the highest, healthiest;, and most lasting pleasure. 

It is, however, only by considering Scott in rela- 
tion to his own age and the circumstances in which 
he formed himself, that we can reach a full estimate 
of him as a poet. This mode of viewing a man, it is 
true, has been sometimes pressed too far. Genius, in 
one sense the child of its century, in another is its 
father. Circumstances explain much : but they do 
not account for it. The individuality of the poet will 
always be the central point in him; there is an 
element in the soul insoluble to the most scientific 
analysis of a man's surroundings. But much light is 
undoubtedly gained by examining them. Scott re- 
ceived early, as we have seen, his direction in litera- 
ture. Coming at the close of an age of criticism, he 
inaugurated an as;© of revival and of creation. It has 
been already noticed, that there w^as something of 



LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 41 

reaction in this. Love of the ballads of Scotland, of 
medijBval legends, of German romantic j^oetry, had 
unconsciously impressed his style upon him before 
1800. Already his passion was to describe wild and 
adventurous characters, to delineate the natural land- 
scape, to seek the persons of his drama in feudal 
times or in the common life around him. The weighty 
satire of Dryden or Johnson, the cultivated world of 
Pope, the classical finish of Gray, although admired 
for their own merits, had no share in his heart of 
hearts. The friend of Dr. Blacklock, the child of 
the Edinburgh of Hume and Adam Smith, he was a 
'* born romantic" without knowing it. Beyond any 
one be is the discoverer or creator of the " modern 
style." How much is implied in this! ... It is true 
that by 1805 two other great leaders had already 
begun their career. Coleridge's fragment of "Chris- 
tabel" was known to Scott, and influenced him in 
the ''Lay." Wordsworth had published some of the 
most charming of his lyrics. But these men had as 
yet produced little effect, and the new faith nowhere 
found fewer believers than in Edinburgh ; w^hcre, 
partly through the reluctance of the ordinary mind 
to accept originality, in part through the intense con- 
servatism of literature, poets who now rank among 
the glories of England were treated as heretics with 
idle condemnation. It was some time before Scott 
could raise himself above this atmosphere, and sa}^ 
of the leading critic of the time, " Our very ideas of 
what is poetry differ so widely, that we rarely talk 
upon these subjects. There is something in Mr. 
Jeffrey's mode of reasoning that leads me greatly to 
doubt whether he really has any feeling of poetical 
genius." Few people are now likely to dispute this 
estimate; and no one did more to discredit the narrow 



42 LIFE or SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

criticism prevalent sixty years since than Scott. If 
Lord Macaulay's opinion be correct, that Byron's 
poetry served to introduce and to popularize Words- 
worth's, Scott's even more decidedly cleared the way 
for "Childe Harold" and the "Giaour." Indeed, 
much in Bj^ron is modelled upon the older poet, to 
whom he always looked up with a respectful affec- 
tion which makes one of the brightest spots in his 
own chequered story. "Of all men Scott is the most 
open, the most honorable, the most amiable." 

With the proceeds of " Eokebj^" Scott made him- 
self master of a cottage then called Clarty Hole, but 
soon characteristically renamed Abbotsford, close to 
the Tweed, about midway between Melrose, Ashestiel, 
and Selkirk. Bare and essentially unimprovable is 
most of the land hereabout : Scott did something for 
it by planting, — the favorite outdoor employment of 
his middle life; yet to an English eye the trees have 
a poor, sad, nay (what from his work one did not 
expect), even a formal and unpicturesque, air; the 
wider views over the Border are rather desolate than 
impressive; there is neither the sweet "pastoral mel- 
ancholy" of Yarrow, nor the verdure and richness 
of Melrose. But to the inner eye of the poet this 
region displayed scenes more lovely than Sorrento, 
more romantic than Monte Rosa. There was the 
Eoman way to the ford by the house, the " Catrail" 
which had bounded 

Reged wide 
And fair Strath-Clyde; 

the glen of Thomas the Ehymer, famous in fiiiry tra- 
dition; the haunted ruins of Boldside; the field of 
the battle of Melrose, the last great clan-fight of the 
Borders; Melrose visible eastward, the Eildon Hills 
cleft into their picturesque serration by Michael 



LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 43 

Scott, south ; Tweed flowing below the house and 
audible in it with its silver ripple. . . . Some ambi- 
tion to found a line of "Scotts of Abbotsford," fated 
not to be fulfilled ; even some fancy less worthy of a 
great mind, to be himself a lord of acres, may have 
influenced hira when he laid out so much money and 
energy on the lands of Abbotsford, and on the end- 
less antiquarian details of the house which he built 
there. Yet many phrases in his writings, and, far 
more, what we know of Scott's nature through life, 
afford convincing proofs that the possessions he really 
and veritably sought for were these memories of the 
past : these relics of that ancient Scotland for which 
he felt, ^'like a lover or a child," with a rare and 
noble passion. Abbotsford, with its Gothic archi- 
tecture — tasteful and poetically imagined, if, to our 
more trained eyes, imperfect in many particulars — 
its armor and stained glass and carved oak, its library 
of previous mediaeval lore, poetry and history, its 
museum of little things consecrated by great remem- 
brances, to Scott was a place where actual life was 
beautified by the ideal of his imagination, a Waverley 
romance realized in stone, a castle of his waking 
dreams, and held, also, as it proved, like those he 
sung of, rather by some fanciful and fairy tenure 
than by matter-of-fact possession. The gray mass of 
Abbotsford, with its sombre plantations, is not more 
enriched and glorified in Turner's lovely drawing, 
than the lordship of these barren acres was to Scott 
by the predominating poet within him. 

In 1814 Scott was one of a cheerful company who 
coasted round Scotland in a yacht engaged upon light- 
house business, touching at the Hebrides, Orkneys, 
Western Isles, and north of Ireland. A pleasant jour- 
nal records the incidents of this trip, saddened at the 



44 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

close by the death of a dear friend, the Duchess of 
Buccleuch. It is a curious point of likeness between 
Scott and Goethe that, both being poets eminently 
interested in seeing men, and cities, and wild nature, 
and both also personally independent, yet the journeys 
of both were remarkably limited. Goethe never saw 
London, Paris, Or Vienna. Except a hasty trip in 
1810, Scott made but this one visit to the North and 
West of Scotland, and hardly knew more of England 
than lay between Berwick and London. The world 
must have lost much by this; but it is possible that 
the poets were guided by a true instinct, and feared 
lest the amount and vividness of the impressions 
which would have poured in upon them might be over- 
powering to the free exercise of their genius. 

With an exultation natural to him, Scott now wit- 
nessed the first fall of i^apoleon. He also completed 
his valuable edition of Swift's works. But the year 
is most remarkable to his biographer through that 
event which marks the beginning of the third epoch 
in Scott's life, — the publication of " Waverley." 

IIL 

During the period here closed, powerful rivals in 
poetry had risen to divide the popularity of Scott. 
Byron had carried the manner of his tales into more 
passionate scenes of life. Crabbe had enlarged that gal- 
lery of human character which, if wanting in beauty, 
in originality and number stands alone amongst the 
poems of the time. The allegiance of those lovers of 
the inmost spirit of poetry who give the law to the 
next generation had been secured by Wordsworth. 
The brilliant dawn of Shelley was breaking on a yet 
unconscious world. Our modern school had passed 
the circle within which Scott had once been the chief 



LIFE OP SIR WALTER SCOTT. 45 

magician. He felt this; and, never strictly a believer 
in his own powers, had already set himself to put into 
the prose form which suited it best some of the vast 
material which he had gathered; beginning with 
the last greatly romantic event in Scottish history. 
*' Waverley," commenced in 1805 (whence the second 
title " Sixty Years Since"), taken up in 1810, was com- 
pleted now, and published in July, 1814. The last two 
volumes were written within three weeks of that sum- 
mer of excitement, a fact of which Mr. Lockhart tells 
a very striking anecdote (iv, 172, 3). From motives 
already touched on, Scott carefully concealed the au- 
thorship; and although long before his name was an- 
nounced (1827) little doubt remained in the minds of 
intelligent men, this first novel wanted the impulse of 
his already acquired fame : yet the blow went home, 
the success was immediate, and the writer had once 
more " found himself" in literature. 

A few more dates will mark, in a general way, the 
course of the writer's genius in this field. ''Guy 
Mannering" appeared in 1815; "The Antiquary" 
and "Old Mortality" next year; "The Heart of 
Mid-Lothian," 1818; "Bride of Lammcrmoor " and 
"Ivanhoe," 1819; " Kenil worth " and " The Pirate," 
1821; "St. Ronan's Well," 1823; the " Fair Maid of 
Perth," 1828. These may be considered the typical 
works of ihe series ; though there is hardly one which 
does not display the wonderful versatility of their 
author. Take even the feeblest of the " Waverley 
!Novels," when shall we see the like again, in this stvle 
of romance ? Goethe was accustomed to speak of 
Scott as the "greatest writer of his time," as unique 
and unequalled. When asked to put his views on 
paper, he replied with the remark which he made also 
upon Shakespeare, Scott's art was so high, that it was 



46 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

hard to attempt giving a formal opinion on it. But 
a few words may be added on the relation borne by 
the Novels to the author's character. Putting aside 
those written in depressed spirits and failing health, 
the inequality of merit in the remainder appears al- 
most exactly proportioned, not to their date, but to 
the degree in which they are founded on Scottish life 
during the century preceding 1771. In this leading 
characteristic they are the absolute reproduction of 
the writer's own habitual thoughts and interests. 
Once more, we find in them a practical compromise 
between past and present. We have had no writer 
whose own country was more completely his inspira- 
tion. But he is inspired by the " ain countree " he 
had seen, or heard of from those who were old during 
his youth. As he recedes from Scotland and from 
"sixty years since," his strength progressively de- 
clines. What we see as the series advances, are not 
so much signs that he had exhausted himself, as symp- 
toms that he had exhausted the great situations of 
the century before his own birth ; and " St. Eonan's 
Well " remains the solitary proof that, had events en- 
couraged Scott to throw himself frankly into contem- 
porary life, he might (in the writer's judgment) have 
been first of the English novelists here, as he indis- 
putably is in the romance of the past. 

It has been observed that one of the curious con- 
trasts which make up that complex creature, Walter 
Scott, is the strong attraction which drew him, as a 
Lowlander the born natural antagonist of the Gael, 
to the Highland people. Looking back on the Celtic 
clans as we happily may, as a thing of the far past, 
softened by distance, colored by the finest tints of 
poetry, and with that background of noble scenery 
which has afforded to many of us such pure and lofty 



LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 47 

pleasure, we caiiDot conceive without a painful effort 
that within a few years of Scott's own birth the High- 
lander had been to the Lowlander much what the 
Hindoo — the Afghan or Mahratta at least — is at pres- 
ent to the Englishman. All that we admire in the 
Gael had been to the Scot proper the source of con- 
tempt and of repugnance. Such a feeling is one of 
the worst instincts of human nature; it is an unmis- 
takable part of the brute animal within us; more 
than any other cause, the hatred of race to race has 
hampered the progress of man. There is also no feel- 
ing which is more persistent and obstinate. But it 
has been entirely conquered in case of the Saxon and 
the Gael. Now this vast and salutary change in na- 
tional oj)inion is directly due to Scott. Something of 
the kind might possibly have come with time ; but he, 
in fact, was the man whose lot was to accomplish it. 
This may be regarded, on the whole, as his greatest 
achievement. He united the sympathies of two hos- 
tile races by the sheer force of genius. He healed the 
bitterness of centuries. Scott did much in idealizing, 
as poetry should, the common life of his contempo- 
raries. He equally did much in rendering the past 
history, and the history of other countries in which 
Scotchmen played a conspicuous part, real to us. But 
it is hardly a figure of speech to say, that he created 
the Celtic Highlands in the eyes of the whole civi- 
lized world. 

If this be not first-rate power, it may be asked 
where we are to find it. The admirable spirit and 
picturesqueness of Scott's poems and novels carry us 
along with them so rapidly, whilst at the same time 
the weaknesses and inequalities of his work are so 
borne upon the surface, that we do not always feel how 
unique they are in literature. Scott is often inaccurate 



4S LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

in historical paintiDg, and puts modern feeling into 
the past. He was not called upon, as we have noticed, 
to represent mental struggles, but the element of orig- 
inal thought is deficient in his creations. '• Scott's," 
savs an able critic, '* is a healthy and genial world of 
reflection, but it wants the charm of delicate exacti- 
tude ; we miss the consecrating power. " (Xational 
Rcvieir, April, 1S5S.) He is altogether inferior to 
Miss Austen in describing the finer elements of the 
womanly nature ; we rarely know how the heroine 
feels; the author paints love powerfully in its effects 
and its dominating influence ; he does not lead us to 
'•the inmost enchanted fountain " of the heart. In 
creating types of actual human life Scott is perhaps 
surpassed by Crabbe; he does not analyze character, 
or delineate it in its depths, but exhibits the man 
rather by speech and action ; he is ** extensive " rather 
than ^-intensive;" has more of Chaucer in him than 
of Goethe ; yet, if we look at the variety and richness 
of his gallery, at his command over pathos and terror, 
the laughter and the tears, at the many large interests 
beside those of romance which he realizes to us, at 
the way in which he paints the whole life of men, not 
their humors or passions alone, at his unfailing whole- 
someness and freshness, like the sea and air and great 
elementary forces of !N^ature, it ma}' be pronounced a 
just estimate which, — without trying to measure the 
space which separates these stars, — places Scott second 
in our creative or imaginative literature to Shake- 
speare. "All is great in the Waverley Novels," said 
Goethe in 1831, " material, effect, characters, execu- 
tion." Astronomers tell us that there are no fixed 
points in the heavens, and that earth and sun momen- 
tarily shill: their bearings. An analogous displace- 
ment may be preparing for the loftiest glories of the 



LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 49 

human intellect ; Homer may become dim. and Shake- 
speare too distant. Perhaps the same fate is destined 
for Scott. Bat it would be idle to speculate on this, 
or try to predict the time when men will no longer 
be impressed by the vividness of" Waverley/' or the 
pathos of" Lammermoor." 

The leading idea of this sketch of Scott's character 
is, that, under the disguise of worldly sense and 
shrewdness, the poetical nature predominated in his 
life. In regard to his conduct and career, this point 
has perhaps been sufficiently illustrated. Looking 
at him now as an imaginative writer; from many 
causes, amongst which modesty and pride played an 
equal part, he has told us little of his own mind. 
Compared with Byron's (see the correspondence be- 
tween them, — iii, 39-4), Seott't letters are superficial; 
until misfortune unveiled him to himself, there are 
no " Confessions " in his journal. Then we find, what 
discerning friends had long noticed, that the strong 
man had carried with him through life the sensitive- 
ness of his childhood. One, to whose papers in 
Frasefs Magazine (1835-6) this sketch is indebted for 
some observations not found elsewhere, remarks that 
Scott was often subject to fits of abstraction, when 
he would be so completely absorbed in thick-coming 
fancies, that he became unconscious where he was, 
or what he was writing. Scott's stem repression and 
strong wish to do before the world only what the 
world does, render these points at once more hard to 
trace, and more significant. The emotion of such a 
character is deep in proportion to the resistance 
which it meets from the other elements. The fervor 
which melted Scott would have consumed a less 
powerful nature. When among scenes of wild Nature 
he was so rapt and excited that his friends felt it 



50 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

the wisest and k'mdest thing -'to leave him to him- 
self" (^iv, 181). This was in the height of his vigor 
and assumed stoicism. Later on, but some time 
before decline had seized him, he writes, " The beauty 
of the evening, the sighing of the summer breeze, 
bring the teai*s into my eyes not unpleasantly :" or 
again, "I spent the day wandering from place to 
place in the woods, idly stirred by the succession of a 
thousand vague thoughts and fears, the gay strangely 
mingled with those of dismal melancholy ; tears which 
seemed ready to flow unbidden ; smiles which ap- 
proached to those of insanity." And then he adds, 
'• I scribbled some verses, or rather, couiposed them 
in my memory.'* If the one eminent English critic 
who has expressed a formal judgment upon Scott as 
a writer, had not insisted chiefly upon the rapidity 
of his writings, treating them as superficial and tran- 
sient in interest, it would have been unnecessary to 
dwell upon this point ) it really is no more than that 
imagination is never displayed but by a man of im- 
aginative mind ; that poetry can be written only by 
a poet. But even the charge of over-haste appears 
to be pressed by Mr. Carlyle too far. Scott's idea of 
poetical style, it must be allowed, errs upon the side 
of spontaneous impulse; he would rather be unfin- 
ished than overfinished, preferred vigor to I'efine- 
ment, and aimed at the qualities he admired in Dry- 
den, "perpetual animation and elasticity of thought;" 
did not make the most of his admirable materials; 
atoned for the random and the reckless by pictu- 
resqueness and moveuient. But there is nothing to 
be atoned for in perfect work; '-incompleteness can- 
not enter into it ;" the rival forces, as in Xature, 
balance each other. In a word, Scott's was the 
Gothic mind throughout, not the Greek ; he wants 



LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 51 

that indefinable air of distinction which even the 
lesser ancient authors have; no writer of such power 
has furnished fewer quotations; "he used the first 
sufficient words which came uppermost;" he does 
not bring his idea to a consummate expression, such 
as incorporates itself within the memory; thought 
and the phrase, matter and spirit, rarely seem to form 
one indivisible whole. It is in this quarter that he 
is perhaps most in danger from the hand of Time. 
To say that such was Scott's nature, and that he did 
best to follow it, whether in his genius or in his life, 
would be to assume that he was incapable of the 
peculiar attribute of genius, its capacity for improve- 
ment. Yet we must not conclude that his writing 
cost him little; it should be remembered that he 
hardly touched original work till he was of mature 
age, and had collected vast stores; he is like the 
musician who plays the most difficult piece at sight, 
as the reward and the result of years of practice. 
"What infinite diligence in the preparatory studies; 
what truth of detail in the execution," said Goethe. 
The speed with which Scott actually composed, in 
fact, consumed him ; the fire of heaven destroyed the 
conductor. "When we read that "Guy Mannering" 
was completed within six weeks, we may say, " These 
things were his paralysis." Nothing came to Scott 
"in his sleep." "I will avoid," he says, in one of the 
few letters where he speaks out, " any occupation so 
laborious and agitating, as poetry must be to be worth 
anything" (vi. 400). 

The one of all Scott's writings which has the highest 
qualities of pathos and of unity, — the one which, on 
the whole, may be called his greatest and most poeti- 
cal, afi'ords the clearest example of what this essay 
aims most at proving, the dominant intensity of the 



52 LIFE OF Sm WALTER SCOTT. 

imaginative element in Scott. He dictated the -' Bride 
ofLammermoor" while recovering from very severe 
illness (ISIO^* : but on regaining health, •• when it was 
first put into his hands in a complete form, he did 
not recollect one single incident, character, or con- 
versation it contained." Of all that we know about 
Scott, this incident is the most remarkable, especially 
if we recall the conspicuous sanity of his tempera- 
ment ; it casts the deepest light upon his nature ; it 
shows how. when he wrote most powerfully, he was 
so inspired and penetrated by his subject that it 
flowed from him as if by a kind of rapture or pos- 
session ; it makes one ready to say that, when least 
himself, he was most himself. 

But many pages might be given to the criticism of 
Scott as a writer. It is time that we should resume 
his life, and try to complete the picture of his char- 
acter. Scott had once or twice visited London in 
his earlier days, when he was known mainly as an 
antiquarian ; in 1S15 he was received there •• with all 
the honors." -Waverley," everywhere recognized 
as his, put him at the head of our imaginative prose ; 
as a poet, he was second in popularity to Byron 
alone. Byron's boyish attack upon him in the '• Eng- 
lish Bards" had been loner forf^otten ; for^^iveness it 
had never needed from the exquisite sweetness of 
Scott's temper, who had laughed, praised the writer's 
power, and added only, '• spleen and gall are disas- 
trous materials to work with for any length of time." 
These two great men now met, each with equal 
esteem for the gifts of the other; and Scott sought 
Byron's friendship with that alacrity of warm admi- 
ration for force of mind and character which marks 
him through life, and is one of the surest signs of 
genius. Soon after came the final •• Hundred Days" 



LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 53 

of Xapoleon ; Scott was among the first to visit the 
scenes of the campaign, and he found at Paris — then 
a city representative of everything except France — 
a renewal of his English popularity from the politi- 
cians and soldiers of the " allied armies." Some ani- 
mated letters, and an Ode on Waterloo (not equal to 
the occasion), were the fruit of this journey. Xow 
followed several years of a splendid, and, on the 
whole, a singularly well-enjoyed prosperity. " What 
series," says Mr. Carlyle, "followed out of WaveTley^ 
and how and with what result, is known to all men, 
was witnessed and watched with a kind of rapt as- 
tonishment by all. Walter Scott became Sir Walter 
Scott, Baronet, of Abbotsford (1S20) ; on whom For- 
tune seemed to pour her whole cornucopia of wealth, 
honor, and worldly good ; the favorite of princes and 
of peasants, and all intermediate men." That there 
was another and a more poetical side to the " wealth 
and worldly good " in Scott's mind has been already 
noticed; Abbotsford, with its relics and historical 
territory; its visitors from all lands, including many 
of the best of his contemporaries; its happy life 
among friends of equal age, and children fast grow- 
ing up to be friends (two sons and two daughters), 
and healthy pleasures in forest and moor; and now 
at last, full enjoyment of the creative power, '-the 
vision and the faculty divine," was a realized romance 
to Scott, the past living again in the present, com- 
mon existence enriched and beautified by poetry. 
Mr. Lockhart here gives several pleasing and bril- 
liant pictures of his father-in-law's life in town and 
country; a day at Abbotsford and a dinner at Bal- 
lantyne's are hardly inferior to scenes in the '• Anti- 
quary '' or •• Rob Eoy " in vividness. 

These descriptions would sufier by abridgment; in 



54 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

place of them, let us try and form some image of the 
man. The first impression seems to have been that 
of a stalwart Liddesdale farmer, shrewd and quiet; 
the figure of good height, the forehead lofty, though 
not to the exaggerated measure of the bust ; com- 
plexion ruddy; features massive, and inclining to 
heaviness. When he spoke, this rather inanimate 
air kindled into brilliant life in his eye and mouth, 
equally capable of expressing humor or pathos, and 
produced a greater effect by the force of contrast. 
The mutability of his features is noted throughout 
his life, and must have tried beyond their powers the 
artists who attempted his portrait. Whether through 
the early fever and its lameness, or some excess in 
field-sports and genial living, or the corrosion of a 
mind that never left him at leisure to "do nothing,'* 
or through all causes combined, when little over fifty 
he had already the look of a " gallant old gentle- 
man;" and the sense of premature old age is written 
on every leaf of his later journals. " I think I shall 
not live to the usual verge of human existence ; I 
shall never see the threescore and ten." Yet Scott 
preserved the spirit of his youth, and to the last was 
characteristically unwilling to allow himself beaten, 
even in climbing a slope without assistance. In these 
external details one reads the man; Scott, with his 
many contrasts and antitheses of disposition, was 
eminently made "all of a piece." This harmony of 
nature was not less shown in his conversation, which 
left the sense of quiet power, inexhaustible variety 
of anecdote, study of human character, and wealth 
of the well-stored memory, rather than of brilliancy. 
"He did not affect saj'ings; the points and senten- 
tious turns, which 'are easily caught up, were not 
natural to him. The great charm of his table-talk 



LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 55 

was in the sweetness and abandon with which it 
flowed, always guided by good sense and taste; the 
warm and unstudied eloquence with which he ex- 
pressed rather sentiments than opinions ; and th€ live- 
liness and force with which he narrated and described." 
Abbotsford was a centre of life and society in its 
brightest, most enjoyable, and most cultivated form, 
unique in England, and which unhappily has never 
found a rival. No house, except it were Voltaire's 
at Ferney, is reputed to have been equally thronged. 
Scott's hospitality and kindliness were unlimited; he 
had the open nature which is the most charming of 
all charms; was wholly free from the folly of fastidi- 
ousness; had real dignity, and hence never "stood 
upon it;" talked to all he met, and lived as friend 
with friend among his servants and followers. " Sir 
Walter speaks to every man," one of them said, " as 
if they were blood-relations." Let us complete the 
picture in his own words ; they give us the two con- 
trasting sides of his character. " Pew men have en- 
joyed society more, or been bored, as it is called, less, 
by the companj^ of tiresome people. I have rarely, 
if ever, found any one, out of whom I could not ex- 
tract amusement or edification. Still, however, from 
the earliest time I can remember, I preferred the 
pleasure of being alone to wishing for visitors." Need 
it be added that he was fond of the company of youth, 
and delighted as a mother in his children's presence? 
The letters to his eldest son's young wife are the most 
attractive and graceful in the series. 

Our sketch, inevitably incomplete, must not be 
concluded without some note of Scott's taste and 
feeling towards literature. This, says Mr. Lockhart, 
" engrossed the greater part of his interest and re- 
flection." Beside his original works, and the volumi- 



56 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

Dons editions of Swift aud Dry den, Scott edited or 
superintended as many reprints as would have made 
the fame of an ordinary antiquarian. His own taste 
evidently led him by preference to our older poets. 
"With Shakespeare his novels show a close familiarity. 
Scott's admiration for Dryden is expressed in the 
Life prefixed to his edition : that which he felt for 
Johnson's two "Satires" was little inferior. He de- 
plores, in mature life, his ignorance of the Greek lite- 
rature; of the Latin he had no intimate knowledge; 
nor does his early interest in Goethe, " my old master," 
appear to have been followed by the appreciation of 
those works compared with which " Goetz " was but 
crude and feeble. Dante, who represents rather the 
Eoman than the Gothic medievalism, he did not ad- 
mire; finding him '-obscure and difficult," and re- 
maining even seemingly ignorant till the j'ear of his 
death, that his own ancestor, Michael Scott, had 
found a place far down in Hell, where he is lodged 
by Dante in company of Amphiaraus, Teiresias, and 
other reputed sorcerers. In obedience not only to 
his own taste, but to a traditional fame now greatly 
faded, Scott was in the habit of reading through the 
"Orlando" of Ariosto yearly. The judgments pre- 
served on modern English poetry are few and uncrit- 
ical. In an undated conversation he spoke of him- 
self and of Campbell as much inferior to Burns; and 
ranked Miss Joanna Baillie far above each. He even 
couples her with Shakespeare in one of the "Intro- 
ductions " to Marmion. But Scott's impressions fluc- 
tuated. Thus he knew no man (1820) "more to 
be venerated" than Wordsworth for "loftiness of 
genius:" again, he "always reckoned Burns and 
Byron the most genuine poetical geniuses of my time, 
and half a century before me " (1826) : — an opinion 



LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 57 

founded on that predominance of the impalsive char- 
acter in them which was the inspiration of his own 
poetry. On the other hand, Scott more than once 
expresses deep admiration for Miss Austen ; the most 
unlike himself in style, if second only to him in 
genius, among all the novelists of the time. " This 
young lady had a talent for describing the involve- 
ments and feelings and characters of ordinary life, 
which is to me the most wonderful I ever met with." 
After '• Ivanhoe," published 1819, the sale of Scott's 
novels in some degree declined : a fact of which his 
partners in commerce never informed him. To this 
reticence, ultimately as unwise for themselves as for 
him, the negligences which grew upon Scott as a 
writer may be partly due. But to all eyes he in- 
creased in fame and wealth; was caressed and courted 
as kings have seldom been, but without any taint to 
the simplicity and beauty of his nature; and reached 
perhaps the height of his visible popularity with his 
fellow-creatures on his triumphal progress thi-ough 
Ireland in 1825. This was a year dark with panic 
and commercial ruin; Scott's firm, which had been 
always insecure and carelessly conducted, soon felt 
the shock. The poet, perhaps the least unbusiness- 
like member of the house^ must have gradually with- 
drawn from active superintendence; and the clearest 
knowledge he ever obtained of his own affairs was 
when his bankruptcy, early in 1826, had been de- 
clared. The trying circumstances of the time stood 
for much in this failure, and Scott might have ac- 
cepted it without discredit : but the shock roused all 
the determination in one of the most determined of 
men, and he resolved to pay the debt in full, and save 
by his own single-handed exertions what might be 
saved of his beloved Abbotsford for his family. '• Scott's 



58 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

heart clung to the place he had created. There is 
scarce a tree on it that does not owe its being to ??ie." 
His creditors consented ; and the " Life of Napoleon," 
with the last volumes of the " Waverley " series, were 
among the results of this decision. 

Hitherto something had been left to complete 
Scott's character. He had still to prove his complete 
fidelity to his vocation in literature. He had to give 
the far more arduous proof that he could bear evil 
fortune in exchange for unusual good. We cannot 
choose the date of our own trials. Scott's came upon 
him, not as with most men of genius, at their first 
experience of life, during the strength of youth, but 
after years of i-omantic success, and when the ap- 
proaches of mortal disease had alreadj^ enfeebled the 
j)Owers of endurance. In the eye of the world — per- 
haps in the eye of the philosopher — it might have 
been the wiser part to let things take their course, 
submit, and decline a struggle of no doubtful issue to 
his own health and life. But, if these pages present 
a true picture, all this was simply impossible to Scott. 
It would have been to break with what lay deepest 
and broadest in him, — the nature of the poet. Ac- 
cepting then his decision as that which alone he could 
adopt, the record of these later years, as told by Mr. 
Lockhart, and illustrated b}^ Scott's journal, gives to 
his character the completeness of poetical unity. It 
is the fifth act in the drama of his life; it displays 
how the hero met the catastrophe, and overcame it, 
and rested at last from his labors. The words of an 
aged unclC; who did not live to see the evil day, were 
nevermore completely borne out than now: "God 
bless thee, Walter, my man! Thou hast risen to be 
great; but thou wast always good." It must have 
been with no little effort that he reappeared in the 



LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 59 

capital of which he had for many years been beyond 
comparison the most distinguished inhabitant. "I 
went to the Court for the first time to-day," Jan. 24, 
1826, "and^ like the man with the large nose, thought 
everybody was thinking of me and my mishaps. 
Most were, undoubtedly, and all rather regrettingly; 
some obviously affected." Though deeply moved by 
the sj^mpathy shown with him, he did not hold up 
his head until some pamphlets which he published 
upon a Scottish commercial question had succeeded. 
Then he writes, "People will not dare talk of me as 
an object of pit}^; no more poor-manning,'" But ad- 
versity^ now came in no measured proportions; the 
cup was filled, and ran over. Poverty was not the 
only or the worst evil of the year. One son was 
absent in the army, the second for his education; the 
care of a sickly and much-loved grandchild detained 
the eldest daughter; and Scott, leaving his wife ill 
beyond hope at Abbotsford, was compelled to set 
himself to solitary labor within a narrow lodging at 
Edinburgh. Soon a few pages in his journal, fearful 
in the pathetic struggle which they betray, tell us 
of the irremediable loss. Yet throughout the whole, 
Scott maintains that noble and submissive courage 
with which, years before the time of calamity, he 
had looked forward to the unseen future; whatever 
pain or misfortune might be in store, " I am already 
a sufficient debtor to the bounty of Providence to be 
resigned to it." 

This resignation bore its fruits : and a kind of after- 
summer of mild and peaceful radiance, cheered by 
the fidelity of friends and the love of children, re- 
lieves the bodily infirmities and painful task-work of 
Scott's old age. At this time occurred an interchange 



60 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

of interesting letters between him and Goethe. Scott 
gives a characteristic sketch of his own position : 
"My eldest son has a troop of Hussars; my youngest 
has just been made Bachelor of Arts at Oxford. God 
having been j^leased to deprive me of their mother, 
my youngest daughter keeps my household in order, 
my eldest being married," to Mr. Lockhart, "and 
having a family of her own. Such are the domestic 
circumstances of the person you so kindly inquired 
after: for the rest, I have enough to live on in the 
way I like, notwithstanding some very heavy losses: 
and I have a stately antique chateau (modern 
antique), to which any friend of Baron von Goethe 
will be at all times most welcome, with an entrance- 
hall filled with armor, which might have become 
Jaxthausen," the castle in Goethe's Goefz, "itself, 
and a gigantic bloodhound to guard the entrance." 

After a visit to London, where he was received by 
the best men of the time with affectionate respect, 
and a short excursion to Paris, he completed the 
"Life of Napoleon" in 1827. A crowd of other 
volumes followed this massive work, amongst which 
the "Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft" (1830), 
written under the pressure of immiinent illness, are 
only suflGlcient to give an idea how that curious sub- 
ject, for which he had made large preparations, would 
have been treated by Scott in his better days. There 
was much in him of Michael Scott, the magician; 
much also of Eeginald Scott, the courageous advocate 
of reason and humanitj^ in a superstitious age. Half 
shrewdness, half or more than half belief, the poise 
of his mind between the romantic and the critical, 
eminently fitted him to write impressively on witch- 
craft and ghostly legends. Perhaps no single point 



LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 61 

is managed with more supreme skill in the "Novels." 
Let us add that, beside all these labors, his warm 
liberality of heart led him to give others freely that 
assistance with his pen which his purse could no 
longer supply. Already he had cleared off a vast 
load of debt, when Nature, on whom, between physi- 
cal and mental exertion, he had pressed hard since 
youth, avenged herself by serious strokes of paraly- 
sis in 1830 and 1831. "Such a shaking hands with 
Death," he said, "is formidable." Scott resigned his 
leo-al office: but it was in vain that those about hioi 
tried to enforce the quiet of mind which was essential 
to Euthanasia, if not to life. No longer master of the 
creative imagination, the power which had long 
obeyed his bidding now compelled him as a slave; 
and do what his friends could to restrain him, more 
than one of the novels was produced within these 
months of decay. At length he was persuaded to try 
the southern climate. A final gleam of the Scott of 
younger years broke forth for one moment when 
Wordsworth came (Sept. 22, 1831) to bid him fare- 
well. For the last time the two great poets who, 
while following the different paths which led both to 
masterworks, appreciated each other with the deep 
S3niipathy of genius, together traversed the vale of 
Yarrow. This day was commemorated by Words- 
worth in one of the finest occasional poems in our 
language. A serene beauty characterizes the Yarrow 
Revisited. Perhaps Wordsworth looked on the scene 
with less saddened eyes than Scott; perhaps both 
these good and gifted men were raised above the 
inevitable and transient ills of life by the sight of 
nature, and the warmth of friendship; by the con- 
science which, for them more than for most, was 



62 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

without reproof; by the peace which is beyond under- 
standing. 

No public and no private care 

The freeborn mind enthralling, 
"We made a day of happy hours, 

Our happy days recalling. 
And if, as Yarrow through the woods 

And down the meadow ranging, 
Did meet us with unaltered face 

Though we were changed and changing ; 
If tJien some natural shadows spread 

Our inward prospect over. 
The soul's deep valley was not slow 

Its brightness to recover. 

A royal vessel, with a sense of propriety rarely 
shown, was provided for Scott, who sailed in October 
for the Mediterranean. Malta, Naples, and Eome, 
mark the successive steps downward of his mind and 
body. Despite many manly and pathetic efforts to see 
and enjoy, these scenes, which would once have moved 
him so deeply, now passed with slighter remark ; al- 
most all that struck him were points connected with 
mediaeval and Scottish history. The Knights of 
Malta, the Lombard relics at La Cava, the bandits of 
Calabria, the Orsini castle of Bracciano, the Cardinal 
of York's villa, the tomb of the last Stuarts in St. 
Peter's, — they read like a summary of the life which 
was well-nigh over ; they resume many of his deepest 
interests. But they came too late. 

— Nature's loveliest looks. 
Art's noblest relics, history's rich bequests, 
Failed to reanimate and but feebly cheered 
The whole world's Darling. 

The news of Goethe's death had been lately 
brought. Scott's impatience redoubled : " He at least 
died at home !" he exclaimed. '' Let us to Abbots- 



LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 63 

ford." Harrying across Europe, but overtaken again 
by the disease as he went, he reached London as if 
only to die (June, 1832). Much public sympathy 
was roused by the intelligence; the Eoyal family 
made daily inquiries ; "Do you know if this is the 
street where he is lying?" was the question of labor- 
ers collected in it; — but of all this Scott was uncon- 
scious ; barely rousing himself for a moment from 
stupor when friends and children approached him. 
Then the one passion which had survived all others 
compelled its way, and he was borne back to draw 
his last breath at Abbotsford. Scott lay as if insen- 
sible in the carriage; "but as we descended the vale 
of Gala he began to gaze about him, and by degrees 
it was obvious that he was recognizing the features 
of that familiar landscape. Presently he murmured 
a name or two — Gala Water, sureli/, Buckholm, Tor- 
woodlee. As we rounded the hill, and the outline of 
the Eildons burst on him, he became greatly excited ; 
and when, turning himself on the couch, his eye 
caught at length his own towers, at the distance of a 
mile, he sprang up with a cry of delight." 

For a few days, home, Abbotsford, Scotland, wrought 
on Scott so powerfully that they seemed capable of a 
cure which would have been hardly less than miracu- 
lous. "I have seen much," he kept saying, as they 
wheeled him through the rooms, "but nothing like 
my ain house — give me one turn more." At last he 
begged to be replaced in his study. "Now give mo 
my pen, and leave me for a little to myself" But 
the pen dropped from his fingers. "He sank back, 
silent tears rolling down his cheeks; but composing 
himself by and by, motioned to me to wheel him out 
of doors again." They thought he then slept, " When 
he was awaking, Laidlaw," one of the many friends 



64 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

who were like brothers to him, "said to me, Sir 
Walter has had a little repose. No, Willie, said he, no 
repose for Sir Walter but in the grave." 

After this it was a gradual descent to the rest 
which remained for him. Of all the many gifts that 
had formed the character of Sir Walter Scott, but 
one was now recognizeable through the gathering 
mist of death ; that inexhaustible affectionateness and 
thought for others which had been the grace of his 
life. The intensity of love in him had throughout 
equalled the intensity of imagination ; the most un- 
selfconscious of our poets, he was perhaps also, so far 
as we can judge, the most unselfish. Scott, with his 
marked manliness of temperament, possessed in equal 
measure the best of the qualities which are often 
called feminine. " For the least chill on the affection 
of any one dear to him, he had the sensitiveness of a 
maiden." Warmth of heart and frankness of love 
were the very centre of his nature ; and to the centre, 
life, struggling hard, had now retreated. At the final 
moment, when the sudden lightening of death came 
upon him, and he took an affecting farewell of Mr. 
Lockhart, it was proposed to fetch his daughters. 
"Shall I send for Sophia and Anne ?" " No," said he, 
"do not disturb them. Poor souls ! I know they were 
up all night. God bless you all." These were his 
last words. On the 21st of September, 1832, the end 
arrived with the gentleness of sleep, in the presence 
of all of his children. " It was a beautiful day, so 
warm that every window was wide open, and so per- 
fectly still that the sound of all others most delicious 
to his ear, the gentle ripple of the Tweed over its 
pebbles, was distinctly audible as we knelt around the 
bed, and his eldest son kissed and closed his eyes." 

Scott was laid b}^ his wife within a family grave 



LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 65 

among the ruins of Drybiirgh Abbey, in the centre of 
the obscure Border province where he was most at 
home, and which his genius has made a region more 
familiar than the places that they have themselves 
seen, to children born in America and Austraha. As, 
looking back to Homer and Shakespeare, one thinks 
of them surrounded by the beings to whom they have 
given a mysterious life, so Scott also lies among the 
real though shadowy world of his own creation. This, 
and the memory of his great-heartedness, is what he 
has left us. Travellers from all lands still throng to 
visit the scenery of his neighborhood, the hillsides he 
planted, the garden he laid out, the house filled with 
the relics sanctified in his eyes by the love of poetry 
and of Scotland. To save that house he fought and 
suffered. But it was never tenanted by his family; 
it stands there like the castle of a dream ; as if ready 
for the master's return, but silent meanwhile and un- 
cheered by life. His children have been long gathered 
to their rest; the lands which he bought at the price 
of genius have passed to another race; and one young 
girl, the child of his daughter's daughter, now pre- 
serves alone the blood of Walter Scott of Abbotsford. 

F. T. Palgrave. 




ESSAY ON SCOTT. 

(from MASSON'S ENGLISH NOVELISTS.) 

N virtlite both of his constitution and of his 
education, Scott, if he had betatron hims'elf 
to prose fiction at first, instead of deferring 
his exercises in it to his mature age, would 
have had his connections, in the main, with the two 
last-named schools of British novel- writing at the 
close of the last and the beginning of the present cen- 
tur}^. He would have stood apart from Godwin and 
his class of political and speculative novelists, or would 
have even proclaimed himself their antagonist; and 
he would have taken rank both among the romance 
writers of the Gothic picturesque and among the paint- 
ers of contemporary life and manners, — a chief among 
both, by reason of the general superiority of his ge- 
nius, and producing among both those peculiar effects 
which would have resulted from his passion for the 
real in History, from his extensive antiquarian knowl- 
edge, and from his Scotticism. We have his own 
authority for this statement. He tells us that, as 
early as 1799 or 1800, before he had appeared con- 
spicuously as a poet, he had meditated the composi- 
tion of a prose tale of chivalry, after the example of 
Walpole's " Castle of Otranto," but on a Scottish sub- 
ject, and with 'aplenty of Border characters and su- 
pernatural incident." He had actually written some 
pages of such a -romance, to be entitled '-Thomas the 
Rhymer," when circumstances changed his intention. 
He did not, however, abandon the idea of a Scottish 

(67) 



68 ESSAY ON SCOTT. 

prose romance. In 1805 he wrote a portion of Wa- 
verley ; and though that, too, was thrown aside, the 
impression made upon him by Miss Edgeworth's 
Irish tales was such as to convince him that, when he 
had leisure, he should be able to do something, in a 
similar style, for the representation of Scottish man- 
ners. The leisure came in 1814, wJ|to Waverley was 
completed and published. BetweJ^that date and 
his death, in 1832, he gave to the world, beside much 
else, the rest of the series of the Waverley novels. 

If we omit one or two tales now included in the 
series, but not originally published in it, the Waverley 
Novels are twenty-nine in number. Of these twent}'- 
nine novels, unless I err in my recollection of their 
contents, twelve belong to the eighteenth century, 
whether to the earlier or to the later part of it, 
namely : Waverley^ Guy 3Iannering, The Antiquary, 
Rob Roy^ The Black Dwarf, The Heart of Mld-Lothian, 
The Bride of Lammermoor, St. Ronan's Well, Red- 
gauntlet^ The Highland Widoiv, The Tioo Drovers, and 
The Surgeon's Daughter; six belong to the seven- 
teenth century, namely: Old Mortality, The Legend 
of Montrose, The Pirate, Woodstock, The Fortunes of 
Nigel, and Peveril of the Peak ; three to the sixteenth, 
namely: The Monastery, The Abbot, and Kenilworth ; 
three to the fifteenth, namely: Quentin Durward, The 
Fair Maid of Perth, and Anne of Geierstein ; one to 
the fourteenth, namely: Castle Dangerous; and the 
remaining four to other centuries as far back as the 
end of the eleventh, namely : Ivanhoe, The Betrothed, 
The Talisman, and Count Robert of Paris, Thus it 
appears that, though Scott did not hesitate to throw 
an occasional novel pretty far back into feudal and 
Gothic times, he preferred, on the whole, ground 
nearer to his own age, where he could blend the in- 



ESSAY ON SCOTT. 69 

terest of romantic adventure with that of liomcly 
and humorous representation of manners. Take an- 
other numerical classification of the novels on a dif- 
ferent principle. Out of the whole twenty-nine, no 
fewer than nineteen, as I calculate, have their scenes 
laid wholljT-, or in great part, in Scotland, and are, 
almost throughout, novels of Scottish circumstance; 
five have their scenes laid in England, one of which, 
however, The Fortunes of Nigel, has much of Scottish 
circumstance in it; two have their scenes on the 
Continent, one of which, however, Quentin Durward, 
has a Scotchman for its hero; and three are Oriental 
in their ground and reference — of which one also, 
The Talisman, is dedicated to the adventures of a 
Scotchman. Thus, as regards place, it appears that 
Scott kept by preference near home ; and that, but 
for some six or seven novels spared for purely Eng- 
lish or for more remote themes, the name of the 
" Scottish Novels " might be applied with accuracy to 
the entire series. Combining the two classifications, 
and taking note of the order in which the novels 
were published, we can farther see, very distinctly, 
that Scott began with those which were Scottish in 
their subjects, and \?ij nearest his own age ; and that 
only after he had pretty well exhausted that ground 
and that time, did he work far backwards chrono- 
logically, and away from Scotland geographically. 
Ivanhoe, which was his first novel not Scottish in 
subject^ and also the first thrown farther back in time 
than the seventeenth century, was the tenth novel of 
the series in the order of composition. 

You do not expect me, I am sure, to criticize the 
Waverley novels. We all know them, and we all 
enjoy them. There has been a deluge of British 
novels since they were written, — many of them most 



70 ESSAY OX SCOTT. 

rich and striking, and sorae of them presenting subtle 
ebaraet eristics which we do not seek in the Waverley 
novels, and which recommend them in an express 
manner to recent tastes; but when we are fatigued 
after a hard day's work, and want a book in the 
evening, do we not, all of us, find it answer our pur- 
pose to fall back on a Waverley novel ? At such times, 
do we not run over the series mentally, or on the 
book-shelf, to see which of the novels it is that lies 
farthest off in our recollection ; and. even should that 
chance to be the poorest of the set, do we not find it, 
after all, very pleasant reading? And, in this way, 
do we not systematically recover one after another of 
the series, just as it is slipping over the horizon of 
our memory, and retain all in permanent possession ? 
And, when we think how many can use the books in 
this way, — that it is not the rich or the learned only 
that can thus wile away an hour of fatigue over 
these volumes, but to myriads of the poor and labo- 
rious, wherever our language is spoken, and, through 
translation, farther still, they serve the same refresh- 
ing function, as being so simple in matter and of such 
general interest, that the unlearned as well as the 
learned can understand them, and, at the same time, 
so pure and healthy in the main that no mind can 
take harm from them,-i-have we not, in this thought. 
some measure of the gratitude which, if only on the 
score of innocent amusement, the world owes to Scott ? 
He was a modest, hearty man, with as little of the 
eant of authorship about him as any author that ever 
lived ; he even detested that cant, talked as little of 
books as any man, and was a living rebuke to that 
miserable pedantry of our book-making days, which 
thinks and acts as if books were the only things of 
interest in the world, as if the earth were mere 



KSSAT 02f =: 7T. 71 

standing-groimd for writers 
and the skj parchmeDt; at 
of his own novels, or of pr«>5-r 
was enoagh for him to think tL. 
cent amosemeDt were thereby 
men. in the midst of their ^ " - 
have their minds a little li^- 
stirred bv 

tained morr 

it- It is the part of all poets : :.dve writers 

thas to make rich the thought •: ' v addi- 

tions to its stock of wellinowL _ i wb^ 

we think of the quantitv of Scotrs creative writing, 
as well as of its popularity :2 z:i " — :: - '-—ber 
of romantic stories he gsv- — :Ke 

plenitude of vivid incidr 

in his novels of pic* - _ ^ 

of nature, fit for tl r— - 

ploying it ; an 1 
of characters. : 
ous, which his z " - 7 

lation of beincrs c-^^ 
genius of the p-ssr 

head as airy a. z : 1 t 

he evidently t^^ 
man whose ooe : 
British im:._ 
various ^ 
mulatr - 

he : H- 

more widely di:ffiise . 
European and .*. 
individual wriir 



72 ESSAY ON SCOTT. 

generations hence, the tinge of that influence will 
still be visible. 

It was no slii!:ht thiiio; for the interests of British 
prose fiction, in relation to other established forms 
of our literature, that such a man as Scott, already 
laurelled as a metrical poet, and possessing^ besides, 
a general reputation in the world of letters, should 
have devoted the last eighteen years of his life to 
activity in that particular field. Prose Fiction as- 
sumed, in consequence, a higher relative dignity; 
nay, Prose itself could be conscious of having ad- 
vanced its standard several stages nearer to the very 
citadel of Poesy. Apart, however, from the exten- 
sion given by the Waverley novels to the prose form 
of fiction in the general realm of imaginative writing, 
we note several other influences which they had on 
the direction and aims of imaginative writing, whe- 
ther in prose or in verse. For an exposition of one 
of these influences — the influence exerted by Scott's 
peculiar method of viewing and describing natural 
scenery upon our modern art of landscape, whether 
in literature or in painting — I may refer you to Mr. 
Euskin, to whose observations on such a subject it is 
not for me to add anything. You will find in the 
third volume of Mr. Euskin's "Modern Painters" 
ample illustrations of Scott's fine sense of the pic- 
turesque in natural scenery, and especially of that 
by which Mr. Euskin sets so much store, his fondness 
for color and sensitiveness to its efl'ects; and you will 
there also find distinctions acutely expounded be- 
tween Scott's mode of viewing nature and Words- 
worth's mode, and also between Scott's mode and 
that of Tennyson and other more recent poets. It 
remains for me, in concluding this lecture, to call your 
attention again to those two characteristics of Scott 



ESSAY ON SCOTT. 73 

which we agreed to consider as the most prominently 
marked in his genius, — his veneration for the past, or 
the tendency of his genius to the historical; and, as 
the special form of that, his Scotticism. Out of these 
characteristics, as might be exj^ected, spring two of 
the most notable influences which he has exerted on 
British prose fiction. 

And, first, by the historical character of his novels, 
he communicated an historical tendency to our litera- 
ture of fiction, which has not yet exhausted itself, and 
which has led to important results not ending in fiction 
only. Scott is the father of the Modern Historical 
Novel. There had been attempts at the thing before; 
but he first established this form of writing among us. 
In virtue, however, of his own affection not so much 
for the whole of the historical past as for the Gothic 
portion of that past, from the tenth or eleventh cen- 
tury downwards, — that is, for the ages of European 
chivalry and feudalism, and the times succeeding 
them, — he established the Historical Novel among 
us, so far as his own labors went, not in its entire ca- 
pabilities, but only as applied to the range of the 
Gothic period, mediaeval and modern. Scott is said 
to be the founder of the Novel of Chivahy. Such a 
designation, however, though accurate so fiar, is not 
sufiiciently extensive. By far the greater number of 
his novels, as we have seen, are not novels of the age 
of Chivalry, nor even of that of Feudalism, but refer 
to times subsequent to the Reformation, and, most of 
them, to the latter half of the seventeenth or to the 
eighteenth ceDtur3^ The phrase " Historical Novel " 
is, therefore, the more suitable; or, to be more pre- 
cise still, "the Historical Novel of the Gothic period 
in Europe." Those who have in their minds the 
proper signification of the words " Gothic period/' 



74 ESSAY ON SCOTT. 

as meaning the period of the leading activity of the 
so-called Gothic race in civilization, will understand 
what is here meant. There is no doubt that Scott 
did much to rouse an interest in this period of history, 
to settle our filial affections upon it as that whence 
we derive immediately all that is in us and about us; 
and also that he did much to interpret it to us, to 
make its habits, its costumes, its modes of life and 
action, more conceivable and intelligible. Even in 
such a matter as the revival among us of a taste for 
Gothic architecture, and for mediaeval art generally, 
Scott's influence may be traced. 

Here, however, comes in a question which was re- 
served. Was Scott's wholesome influence in the 
matter of Gothicism and medisevalism direct or indi- 
rect? Did he do the good he has done in this de- 
partment by his own actual teachings, or only by 
setting a fashion which has led, or may lead, to more 
earnest inquiries and to more accurate teachings? 
Did Scott really understand the earlier feudal and 
chivalrous times which he represents in some of his 
novels? Were his notions of those times authentic 
and true, or only fictitious makeshifts ? Mr. Ruskin, 
with all his admiration for Scott, pronounces de- 
cidedly against him in this question. He says that 
Scott, though he " had some confused love of Gothic 
architecture, because it was dark, picturesque, old, 
and like nature," knew nothing really about it, and 
was wrong in all he thought he knew. He says 
further, that Scott's "romance and antiquarianism, 
his knighthood and monkery," are all false, and were 
known by himself to be false. Baron Bunsen gives 
a similar opinion; and, indeed, I know that the 
opinion is general among men whose judgment in 
such a matter is entitled to respect. I have heard a 



ESSAY ON SCOTT. 75 

very good judge say that the German novel "Sidonia 
the Sorcerer/' is a deeper and truer delineation of 
medis&val life than any of Seott's. For my own part, 
I cannot quite agree with this depreciation of Scott's 
medijEvalism and feudalism, or, at least with the 
manner of it. I do not think that it was his antiqua- 
rian information that was in fault; at least, in read- 
ing his Ivankoe, or his Talisman, or his Quentin Dur- 
ward, or his Fair Maid of Perth,— in all of whicl\ he 
certainly flashes on the fancy in a manner that his- 
torians had not done before, and, with all their carp- 
ing, have not found out the art of doing yet, a vivid 
condition of things intended to pass formedisevalism 
and feudalism, — 1 cannot find that our severest men 
of research have yet furnished us with that irrefrag- 
able and self evidencing scheme or theory of Medise- 
valism and Feudalism, by the test of which what 
Scott proffers as such is to fall so obviously into rub- 
bish. Men, in hovering over a time, must fancy 
somewhat about it; and a very vivid "somewhat" 
will stand till accurate knowledge furnishes the im- 
agination with the substitute. Scott's "somewhat" 
about Chivalry and Feudalism, besides that it will 
fade fast enough as we get a better, was not picked 
up at random, or without an amount of acquaintance 
with the materials that was in his time rather un- 
common. 

What in Scott's Gothicism and Medi^evalism is 
false, arises, I believe, from a certain defect in his 
genius, which would have produced, and perhaps did 
produce, corresponding falsity in his imaginations out 
of the Gothic and mediaeval regions altogether — to 
wit, his deficiency in the purely speculative faculty. 
The only Scottish thing that Scott had not in him 
was Scotch metaphysics. His mind was not of the 



76 ESSAY ON SCOTT. 

investigating, or philosophic, or speculative tvpe; he 
was not, in the distinctive sense of the term, a 
thinker. Craniologists see this defect, they tell us, 
in the very shape of his head. — high above the ears, 
but not long from back to front. Whether the defect 
was in his head or in his thumbs, there it was, and it 
produced its consequences. It is in this most con- 
spicuously that he falls short of Shakspeare. It is 
owing to this that, in so many of his more stately 
and ambitious characters, — as when he tries to paint 
a Cromwell or a Ealeigh, or a Queen Elizabeth, or a 
Louis the Eleventh, or an enthusiastic mediasval 
monk — it seems as if he could but give a certain ex- 
terior account of the physiognomj-^, costume, gesture, 
but had no power to work from the inner mind out- 
wards, so as to make the characters live. He cannot 
get at the mode of thinking of such personages; in- 
deed, the notion of a '^mode of thinking" as belong- 
ing to persons, or to ages, and to be seized in repre- 
senting them, was not very familiar to him. If he 
did not reproduce the earnest and powerful thought 
of the mediaeval period, its real feelings and beliefs, 
it was because his philosophy of the human mind 
and of human history was not so deep and subtle as 
to make feelings, beliefs, and modes of thouglit, the 
objects of his anxious imagination. But, if he failed 
in representing a great and peculiar mind of the his- 
torical past, he w^ould equally' have failed, and for the 
same reason, in representing a great and peculiar 
mind of the historical present. This is a feat indeed, 
to which I do not think we can boast that many of 
our writers of prose fiction have been, at any time, 
competent. 

The wonder is that Scott, notwithstanding his de- 
fect, succeeded so marvellously where he did succeed. 



ESSAY ON SCOTT. 77 

Need I say where thiit is? Do we not feel that iu 
his representations of homely and even of striking 
and heroic Scottish characters (with the exception 
already implied, and accounted for, of his Presbyte- 
rians and Covenanters), in a period of Scottish society 
near to his own time — in his representations of Scot- 
tish life and Scottish humors, nay of Scottish beliefs 
and modes of thinking in the eighteenth and seven- 
teenth centuries (repeat the exception, at least par- 
tially), or even farther back still, where his shrewd 
observations of present human nature could co-ope- 
rate vx^ith his antiquarian knowledge in filling out a 
social picture — he was simply as successful as it was 
possible to be? Are not his Davie Gellatlys, his 
Dandie Dinmonts, his Counsellor Pleydells, his Old- 
bucks, his Saunders Mucklebackets, his Edie Ochil- 
trees, his Cuddie Ileadriggs, his Nicol Jarvies, his 
Caleb Balderstones, his Dugald Dalgetty's, his Meg 
Doddses, and the like; nay, in a more tragic and 
elevated order, are not his Meg Merrilieses, his Eob 
Eoys, his Redgauntlets, his Jeannie Deanses, as per- 
fect creations as any in literature? These, and espe- 
cially the homelier characters, are simply as w^cil 
done as the}^ could possibly be; and, in their concep- 
tion and execution, I do not know that Scott is inferior 
to Shakspeare. Is it that in such cases his Scottish 
heart and his poetic instinct, acting on what he saw 
and knew, whirled him beyond his conscious power 
of speculation ; or is it that, after all, there was a 
speculative faculty in Scott wdiich he had not w^orked? 
From the shrewdness and sagacity of some of his 
critical prefiices to his novels, where he discusses 
principles of literature without seeming to call them 
such, I am sometimes tempted to believe the latter. 
And so, after all^ Scott is greatest in his Scotticism. 



7S ISSAT OS SCOTT. 

It is as & painter of Scottish natare and Scottish life, 
an interpreter of Scottish beliefs and Scottish feelings, 
a narrator of Scottish history, that he attains to the 
height of his genias- He has Scotticized European 
literature. He has interested the world in the little 
land. It had been heard of before ; it had given the 
world some reason to be interested in it before ; with, 
at no time^ more than a million and a half of soals in 
it. it had i^oken and acted with some emphasis in 
relation to the bigger nations aroand it. Bnt, since 
Scott, the Thistle, till then a wajraide weed, has had a 
great promotion in anlTcrsal botany, and blooms, l^ 
prickly than of yore, but the identical Thistle still, 
in all the gardens of the world. Ail round the world 
the Uttie land is ^moos; tourists fl^ck to admire its 
scenery, while they shoot its game; and a&r oit, 
when the kilted ri^ments do British work, and the 
pibroeh shrills them to the work they do, and men, 
marking what they do, ask whence they come, the 
answer is, ^ From the land of Scott." 

- O Catlcdoiua, sttern and wild. 
Meet norse faar a, poetic child !'' 

sang Seott long ago. Cale«lonia nursed him, and he 
has repaid the nursing. And this man was bom 
amongst yom ! This city gave him birth. All Scot- 
land claims him, but here he had his peculiar home. 
^or was he mStimms &xsimiim nor the last of the men 
of Edinburgh. Yom have since had among yon, bom 
am<mg you or naturalized among you from other 
parts of Scotland, other specimens of the national 
breed — Jeffrey, Chalmers, Wilson, Miller, Hamilton. 
[Mature abhors duplicates ; and though in a! I of these 
there was an element of characteristic Scotticism, 
and this was a source of their strength, all of them 



csftAT cm goorr. 79 

were men by thCTis^res, powerful by reaaon of their 
independeat moold and stmetorc, and not one <rf 
them a repetition of Scott. This is as it shovld be. 
Scotticism is not one invariable thing, fixed and in- 
transmatable. It does not consist merehr in Tawtting 
and proclaiming itself, in working in Scottish &eis, 
Scottish traditions, Seotti^ reminiseenees — all of 
which has perhaps been done enoo^; it may be 
driven inwards : it may exist intonally as a node of 
thooght : and th«e may be efficient Scottictsn wb^e 
not one word is said of the Thisde, and wh^e the 
language and the activity are cattM^ie and cosmopol- 
itan. And, seeing that it is so, need we suppose that 
we have yet seen the last of the Scoiebraen, the last 
of the men of Edinbargfa ? So I The drain may ^ill 
be soathwards : Scotland now snbsorves. politicallv 
at least, the higher onity of Great Britain, just ms 
that unity in its turn subserve a larger mity still, 
not so obviously carved out in the body ot the aar- 
rounding world. At the time when Soicland was 
united to her great neighbor, she was made partaker 
of an intelleetaal accumulation and an inhoitanee 
o£ institutions, fer richer, measured by the node of 
extension, than she had to offa> to that n^ghbor in 
return; and since that period, while much <^ the efixt 
of Scotland has been in continuation of ha- own sep- 
arate devdopm^it, mneh has necessarily and jiEtly 
been ruled by the law of her fortunate partnoship. 
And so for the future, it may be the int^nal Scotti- 
cism, working <m British, or on stiD mare genoal 
objects, and not the Scotticisin that works only on 
So3ttish objects of thought, that may be in demand 
in literature as well as in other walks. But whSe 
Scotland is true to h^sei^ and while nature in her 
and her social conditions co-op»ate to impart to h»> 



80 ESSAY ON SCOTT. 

sons such an ediieiition as heretofore, there needs be 
no end to her race of characteristic men, nor even to 
her home-grown and home-supported literature. And, 
if so of Scotland at large, so relatively of the city 
that is her centre. While the traditions of Edin- 
burgh are not forgotten, nor her monuments de- 
stroyed, nor her beauties eradicated; while the Castle 
still frowns in the midst, and the Lion of Arthur's 
Seat still keeps guard, and the wooded Corstorphiues 
lie soft on one side, and the Pentlands loom larger 
behind, and the same circle of objects surrounds the 
ravished sight by day, and at night the lamp-lit 
darkness of the city's own heights and hollows is one 
glittering picturesque, and far off Inchkeith light 
flashes and disappears, piercing this noctural pic- 
turesque intermittingly, as with the gleam of a dis- 
tant mystery; so long, if but human will and industry 
answer as they ought, may this city keep up her in- 
tellectual succession. There are great ones gone, and 
nature abhors duplicates; but 

" Other spirits there are, standing apart 
Upon the forehead of this iow)i to come." 



NKO Bj 



DEYBUEGH ABBEY. 

And Scott— that Ocean 'mid the stream of men! 
That Alp, amidst all mental greatness reared !— 

|WAS morn — but not the ray which falls 
the summer boughs among, 
When beauty walks in gladness forth, with 
all her light and song; 
'Twas morn — but mist and cloud hung deep upon the 

lonely vale, 
And shadows, like the wings of death, were out upon 
the gale. 

For He whose spirit woke the dust of nations into 

life— 
That o'er the waste and barren earth spread flowers 

and fruitage rife — 
Whose genius, like the sun, illumed the mighty realms 

of mind — 
Had fled forever from the fame, love, friendship of 

mankind ! 

To wear a wreath in glory wrought his spirit swept 

afar, 
Beyond the soaring wing of thought, the light of 

moon or star; 
To drink immortal waters, free from every taint of 

earth — 
To breathe before the shrine of life, the source whence 

worlds had birth I 

(81) 



82 DRYBURGH ABBEY. 

There was wailing on the early breeze, and darkness 

in the sky, 
When, with sable plume, and eloak, and pall, a funeral 

train swept by ; 
Methought — St. Mary shield ns well! — that other 

forms moved there, 
Than those of mortal brotherhood, the noble, young, 

and fair! 

Was it a dream ? — how oft, in sleep, we ask, " Can 

this be true ?" 
Whilst warm Imagination paints her marvels to our 

view ; — 
Earth's glory seems a tarnished crown to that which 

we behold, 
When dreams enchant our sight with things whose 

meanest garb is gold ! 

Was it a dream ? — methought " the dauntless Harold " 

passed me by — 
The proud " Fitz-James,'' with martial step, and dark 

intrepid eye ; 
That " Marmion's " haughty crest was there, a mourner 

for his sake ; 
And she, — ^the bold, the beautiful 1 — sweet " Lady of 

the Lake." 

The " Minstrel " whose last lay wsiS o'er, whose broken 

harp lay low. 
And with him glorious " Waverley," with glance and 

step of woe ; 
And " Stuart's" voice rose there, as when, 'mid fate's 

disastrous war, 
He led the wild, ambitious, proud, and brave " Yich 

Ian Vohr.'' 



DRTBURGH ABBEY. 83 

Next, marvelling at his sable suit, the '' Dominie " 

stalked past, 
With "Bertram/' "Julia" by his side, whose tears 

were flowing fast ; 
" Guy Mannering," too, moved there, o'erpowered by 

that afflicting sight ; 
And "Merrilies," as when she wept on Ellangowan's 

height. 

Solemn and grave, "Monkbarns'' appeared, amidst 

that burial line ; 
And "Ochiltree'' leant o'er his staff, and mourned 

for " Auld lang synel" 
Slow marched the gallant " Mclntyre,'' whilst " Lovel " 

mused alone ; 
For once, " Miss Wardour's " image left that bosom's 

faithful throne. 

With coronach, and arms reversed, forth came "Mae 

Gregor's " clan — 
Eed "Dougal's" cry pealed shrill and wild — "Eob 

Eoy's " bold brow looked wan : 
The fair " Diana " kissed her cross, and blessed its 

sainted ray; 
And "Wae is me!" the ^'Baillie" sighed, 'nhat I 

should see this day !" 

Next rode, in melancholy guise, with sombre ve&t 
and scarf, 

Sir Edward, Laird of Ellieslaw, the far-renowned 
" Black Dwarf;" 

Upon his left, in bonnet blue, and white looks flowing 
free — 

The pious sculptor of the grave— stood "Old Mor- 
tality !" 



84 DRTBURGH ABBEY. 

'' Balfour of Burley/' " Claverhouse," the " Lord of 

Evandale," 
And stately '• Lady Margaret," whose woe might 

nought avail ! 
Fierce •' Bothwell " on his charger black, as from the 

conflict won; 
And pale -'Habakkuk Mucklewrath," who cried 

'- God's will be done !" 

And like a rose, a young white rose, that blooms mid 

wildest scenes, 
Passed she. — the modest, eloquent, and virtuous 

" Jeanie Deans ;" 
And -'Dumbeidikes," that silent laird, with love too 

deep to smile, 
And " Effie," with her noble friend, the good " Duke 

of Arcrvle." 



With lofty brow, and bearing high, dark '-Eavens- 

wood " advanced, 
Who on the false '• Lord Keeper's " mien with eye 

indignant glanced : — 
Whilst graceful as a lonely fawn, 'neath covert close 

and sure, 
Approached the beauty of all hearts — the " Bride of 

Lammermoor !" 

Then "Annot Lyle," the fairy queen of light and 
song, stepped near. 

The •' Knight of Ardenvhor," and he, the gifted Hie- 
land Seer; 

*' Dalgetty," •• Duncan," •• Lord Monteith," and '• Ran- 
ald." met my view; 

The hapless - Children of the Mist," and bold " Mhich- 
counel Dhu ! " 



DRYBURGH ABBEY. 85 

On swept '-'Bois-Guilbert"— '-Front de Bceuf"— '-De 

Bracy's " plume of woe ; 
And "Cceur de Lion's" crest shone near the valiant 

" Ivanhoe;" 
While soft as glides a summer cloud "Rowena " closer 

drew, 
With beautiful " Eebecca," peerless daughter of the 

Jew ! 

Still onward like the gathering night advanced that 
funeral train — 

Like billows when the tempest sweeps across the 
shadowy main; 

Where'er the eager gaze might reach, in noble ranks 
were seen 

Dark plume, and glittering mail and crest, and wo- 
man's beauteous mien ! 

A sound thrilled through that length'ning host ! me- 
thought the vault was closed, 

Where, in his glory and renown, fair Scotia's bard 
reposed ! 

A sound thrilled through that length'ning host! and 
forth my vision fled ! 

But, ah ! that mournful dream proved true. — the im- 
mortal Scott was dead ! 

The vision and the voice are o'er ! their influence 

waned away, 
Like music o'er a summer lake at the golden close of 

day: 
The vision and the voice are o'er I — but when will be 

forgot 
The buried Genius of Romance — the imperishable 

Scott ? 



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and revisions, in 23 volumes, crown 8vo. 

At this date, when those parts of the world wherever the 
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and rearing monuments to his memory, it is almost superfluous 
to speak of the merits of the Waverley Novels, his most im- 
perishable monument. But if, as a quaint writer has said, 
"books are a guide in youth, &c.," what works of fiction can 
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surpassing all others, giving the reader a better knowledge of 
history, and the manners and customs of historical times, than 
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In making so important an addition, to any collection, it 
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The range of authors is very wide; the biographical notices full and inter- 
esting. I am surprised that the author has been able to collect so many 
particulars in this waj'. The selections appear to me to be made with dis- 
crimination, and the criticisms show a sound taste and a correct appreci- 
ation of tlie qualities of the writers, as well as I can judge."— ira^iam IT. 
PrCiCoit, the Historian. 

The present edition has been thoroughly revised, every page has been 
gone over, and notices of authors who have passed away since the previous 
editions wore published, have been revised and continued to the period of 
their decease, and long and critical articles on the authors of the present 
day have been added, making the work complete in every respect to the 
present time. It should occupy a prominent place in the library of every 
cultivated American. 

GEMS FR0:M the AMERICAN POETS. With brief biographi- 
cal notices. With a tine engraving on steel. 32mo, cloth, 
60 cents; illuminated sides, 90 cents ; Turkey mor., extra, S1.50* 

FREDERIC H. HEDGE, D.D. 

SHE PROSE WRITERS OF GERMANY. With Introductions, 

Biographical Notices, and Translations. With six portraits on 

steel and engraved title. Imperial Svo. Cloth, extra, gilt top, 

bevelled boards, So.fiO; sheep, marbled edges, library style, 

$6.00 ; half calf, gilt, $7.50; full Turkey morocco, $10.00. 

" There is no book accessible to the English or American reader which 

can furnish so comprehensive and symmetrical a view of German literature 

to the unitiated: and those already conversant Avith some of the German 

classics will find here valuable and edifying extracts from works to which 

very few in this country can gain &ccGSS,."—Prof. A. 1^. Feabody, in North 

American Ecviitp. 

PROF. HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. 

THE POETS AND POETRY OF EUROPE.- With Introductions, 

Biographical Notices, and Translations, from the Earliest 

Period to the Present Time. New edilion, thoroughly revised 

and completed to the present time. With Engravings on steel 

and engraved title. Imperial Svo. Cloth, extra, gilt top, bev. 

boards, $6.00; sheep, marbled edges, library style, $7.50; half 

calf, gilt, $9.00; full Turkey morocco, $12.00. 

•'This valuable volume contains selections from about three hundred and 

sixty authors, translated from ten languagps,^the Anglo-Saxon, Icelandic, 

Danish, Swedish, Dutch, German, French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese. 

Mr. liOngfellow himself gives us translations from all of these languages but 

two. Among the other translators are Bowring, Felton, Herbert, Costello, 

Taylor, Jamieson, Brooks, Adamson, Thorpe, &g." —AUUtone' s Dictionary 

«f AxUhon, vol. ii. 



PORTER & COATES' PUBLICATIONS. 



WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE. 

COMPLETE "VS'ORKS. Dramatic and Poetical, with the " Epistle 
Dedicatorie," and the Address prefixed to the edition of 1623, a 
Sketch of the Life of the Poet, by Alexander Chalmeks. 
A.M., and Giossarial and other Notes and References. Edited 
by Geokge Long Duyckink. With twelve full-page tinted 
Illustrations, designed by Nicholson, a superb portrait on 
steel, from the celebrated Droeshout picture, and beautiful 
engraved title, on steel. 976 pp. Imperial 8vo. Cloth, extra, 
gilt back, $3.7u ; sheep, library style, $i.oO. 

FINE EDITION OP THE ABOVE, on extra calendered paper, 
with the addition of a History of the Early Drama and Stage 
to the time of Sliakspeare, a full and comprehensive Life, by 
J. Payne Collier, A.M., Shakspeare's Will, critical and his- 
torical Introductions to each play, and thirty-five full-page 
tinted engravings, from designs bj^ Nicholson, a superb por- 
trait on steel from the celebrated Droeshout picture, and 
beautiful engraved title on steel. Imperial 8vo. 1084 pages. 
Half calf, gilt, $8.75; full Turkey morocco, $10.00. 

POEMS AND SONNETS. With a fine engraving on steel. 32mo. 
Cloth, 60 cts.; illuminated side, Oo cts.; Turkey morocco, Sl.'feO. 

THOMAS PERCY, D.D., Bishop of Dromore. 

RELICiUES OP ANCIENT ENGLISH POETRY: consisting of 
Old Heroic Ballads, Songs, and other pieces of the earlier poets, 
with some of later date, not Included in any other edition! 
To which is now added a Supplement of many Curious His- 
torical and Narrative Ballads, reprinted from rare copies, 
With a copious glossary and notes. New edition, uniform witli 
the above. 5-58 pp. Imperial 8vo. Two steel plates. Fine cloth, 
bev. bds., gilt, $3.75; sheep, library style, $1.50; full Turkey 
morocco, SlO.OO. 
"But, above all, I then first became acquainted with Bishop Percy's 

Eeliques of Ancient Poetrj- I remember weU the spot where I 

raad these volumes for the first time. It was beneath a huge plautanus 
tree, in the ruins of what had been intended for an old-fashioned arbor, in 
the firarcZen. I have mentioned. The suai.a r day sped around so fast, that 
notwithstanding the sharp appetite ot thirteen, 1 lorgct the hour of din- 
ner, was sought for with anxiety, and was still lound entranced in my 
intellectual banquet. To read and t;) remember was in this instance the 
same thing, and henceforth I overwhelmed my schoolfellows, and all who 
would hearken to me, with tragical recitations from the ballads of Bishop 
Percy. The first time I could scrape a few shillings together, which were 
not common occurrences with me, I bought unto myself a copy of these 
beloved volumes, nor do I believe I ever read a book half so frequently, or 
with half the enthusiasm."— J/emoir« of his early Life, by Sir Walter Scott 
prefixed to Lockhart's Life of Scott, 

LORD BYRON. 

COMPLETE "WORKS. Prose and Poetry. With five engravings 
on steel. Imp. 8vo. Sheep, library style, $1.50; Turkey mo- 
rocco, antique, $10.00. 

"If the finest poetry be that which leaves the deepest impression on the 
minds of its readers,— and this is not the worst test of its excellence,— Lord 
Byron, we think, must be allowed to take precedence of all his distinguished 
contemporaries. 'Words that breathe, and thoughts that burn,' are not 
merely ornaments, but the common staple of his poetry; and he is not in- 
spired or impressive only in some happy passages, but "throuErh the whole 
body and tissue of his composition."— Xord Jeffrey, Edinburgh Beview, 

THE MORAL AND BEAUTIFUL IN THE POEMS OF LORD 
BYRON. Edited by Rev. Walter Colton. 32mo. Cloth, 60 
cts.; illuminated side, 90 cts.; Turkey morocco, $1.50, 



PORTER & COATES PUBLICATIONS. 



ALEXANDER WILSON. 

AMERICAN ORNITHOLOGY; or, The Natural History of the 
Birds of the United States. Illustrated with plates engraved 
and colored from original drawings from nature. With a slcetch 
of the life of the author, by George Ord, F.R.S., «S:c., &c., with 
Bonaparte's continuation, containing tlie Natural History of 
Birds inhabiting the United States, not given by Wilson. Witli 
figures drawn, engraved and colored from nature, by Charles 
Lucien Bonaparte (Prince of Musignano). Complete in three 
volumes, imperial 8vo.; and a magnificent folio volume of 
carefully colored plates, embracing nearly 400 figures of birds, 
mostly life size. Elegantly bound in cloth, extra, beveled bds., 
silt tops, uucut,, $65.00 ; half Turkey morocco, marbled edges, 
$75.00, 
A new and magnificent edition of this world-renowned work, printed from 
new stereotype plates, on the linest laid paper, and bound in the best man- 
ner. The plates are printed from the original plates of Wilson and Bona- 
parte, engraved by Lawson, "the lirst ornithological engraver of our age," 
and are carefully colored, after the author's own copies. The superiority of 
this work for accuracy of description and naturalness of drawing, has long 
been acknowledged. Daniel Webster speaks of it in the highest terms, say- 
ing that of the salt water birds, mentioned in Wilson, "he had shot every 
one, and compared them with his delineations and descriptions, and in 
EVERY CASK found them perfectly accurate to nature." And the 
London Quartrrly iJcrieu; characterized it as "an admirable work, uncqual- 
ed by any publication in the old world, for accurate delineation and just 
description." A moment's comparison of this work with any other on the 
same subject, will convince the most skeptical of its great superiority. As 
a specimen of American book making, it has never been surpassed, and, at 
the low price it is now offered, should be in every public and private library 
Qf any pretensions. 

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. 

THE POETICAL WORKS OF ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWN- 
ING.. Complete. Printed with large type, on laid tinted paper, 
and a fine portrait on steel. Two elegant volumes, 12mo, cloth, 
85.00; half calf, gilt, extra, 89.00; full Turkey, extra, S12.00; 
crown, 8vo yolume,. cloth, extra, $3.00. 

The poems of Mrs. Browning have received tne encomiums of the ablest 
authors and critics, and have assumed their place among the " few immor- 
tal names that are not soon to die." Few poets, surely no other woman ever 
wrote with the same vigor of thought, united with such delicacy of senti- 
ment of feeling. With many she is decidedly preferred to Tennyson; for 
while she has the same happy turns of expression, and pretty conceits of 
language, she unites more strength and character. 

A CHARMING WORK. 

MOTHER GOOSE IN HER NEW DRESS. A Series of Charming 
Sketches, beautifully chromo lithographed. This book v/ili 
create a sensation. The distinguished authoress designed the 
original of this work as a birth-day gift to her father, who 
occupies t)ne of the highest positions in the United States gov- 
ernment, but several connoisseurs happening to see it were so 
struck by its merits, that she was induced to have it published. 
Mother Goose never looked so charming as she does in her pre- 
sent dross. Cloth, gilt, beautifully bound, with linen guards, 
$4,50. 

CERVANTES. 

THE HISTORY AND ADVENTURES OF DON Q,UIXOTE DE LA 
MANCHA. From the Spanish of Cervantes. With six full-page 
illustrations, by Gustave Dore. Large 12mo, cloth, extra, $1.50, 



PORTER & COATES PUBLICATIONS. 



CHARLES KNIGHT. 

HALF HOURS WITH THE BEST AUTHORS, With Short Bio- 
graphical and Critical Notices. Elegantly printed on the finest 
paper. With fine steel portraits. 6 vols., crown 8vo. cloth, bev. 
boards gilt tops, $9.00; half calf, gilt, $18.00; half morocco, gilt 
tops, $18,00; or bound in 3 vols., thick cx'own 8vo, fine English 
cloth, bev. boards, gilt tops, per set, $7.50 ; half calf, gilt, $12.00. 
Selecting some choice passage of the best standard authors, of sufficient 
length to occupy half an hour in its perusal, tliere is here food for thouglit 
fbr every day in the year ; so that if the purchaser will devote but one half- 
hour each day to its appropriate selection, he will read through these six 
volumes in one year, and in such a leisurely manner that the noblest 
thoughts of many of the greatest minds will be firmly implanted in his mind 
forever. For every Sunday there is a suitable selection from some of the 
most eminent writers in sacred literature. We venture to saj-, if the editor's 
idea is carried out, the reader will possess more information and a better 
knowledge of the English classics at the end of the year than he would by 
five years of desultory reading. The variety of reading is so great that no 
one will ever tire of these volumes. It is a library in itself. 

MISS JANE PORTER. 

The two following are new stereotype editions, in large, clear tj'pe, with 
initial letters, liead and tail pieces, &c. The illustrations were designed 
expressly for this edition, and engraved in the highest stj^e of art. 

THE SCOTTISH CHIEFS. Illustrated by F. O. C. Darley. Crown 
Svo, 7 18 pp. Fine English cloth, gilt. Price, $1.50 ; half calf, 
gilt, $3.50. 

" Sir Walter Scott, in a conversation with King George IV, in the library 
at Carlton House, admitted that 'The Scottish Chiefs' suggested his 
' Waverly Novels.' "—AiUbonc's Dictionary of Authors. 

'•This is a new and by far the best edition of a national romance which 
has been as mvich read and admired as almost any of Scott s or Dickens' 
novels. It is low-priced, well printed, and handsomely bound. Thousands 
of readers will be glad to go over this stirring tale once more."— Philadel- 
phia Press. 

REGINA MARIA ROCHE. 

THE CHILDREN OF THE ABBEY. Illustrated by F. O. C. Bar- 
ley. Uniform with " The Scottish Chiefs." Crown Svo, 646 pp. 
Fine English cloth, gilt. Price, $1.50; half calf, gilt, $3.50. 

" This classic is more neatly published in the new edition than we have 
ever seen it. It was long a standard, and had more favor than 'Tiiaddeus 
of Warsaw,' and it deserved better. It takes a new lease of existence now, 
and we almost envy those who read it for the first time."— Mirth American, 
Philadelphia. 

ROBERT McCLURE, M.D., V.S. 

THE AMERICAN GENTLEMAN'S STABLE GUIDE. Contain- 
ing a Familiar Description of the American Stable ; the most 
approved Method of Feeding, Grooming, and General Manage- 
ment of Horses; together with Directions for the Care of 
Carriages, Harness, «Scc. Expressly adapted for the owners ol 
equipages and fine horses. Cloth extra, illustrated. $1.50. 

A handy manual, giving to the owner of a horse just the information of 
a practical nature that he often feels tbe need of, and by an author who 
thoroughly understands what he is writing about, and what is needed by 
every gentleman. 

"Such a treatise has been needed for years, and we think this volume will 
supply the want. The illustrations are very good and timely."— Pittsburgh 
Daily Gazette, 



m «»dL!nB5 ynaacjoaess. 






JL 





gn fttjr»ffMt^>» 





PORTER t COATES' PUBLICATIONS. 



MARGARET HOSMER. 

Author of "Cherry, the Missionarv," "Grandma Merritt's Stories," "The 
Voyage of the White Falcon," &c., &c. 

LITTLE ROSIES FIRST PLAY DAYS. Illustrated. ISmo., 160 
pp., 75 cents. 

LITTLE ROSIE'S CHRISTMAS TIMES. Illustrated. ISmo., ICa 
pp., 75 cents. 

LITTLE ROSIE IX THE COUNTRY. Illustrated. ISmo., 160 pp. 
75 cents. 
" Very nice children's books, indeed, and we only wish that we had more 
space to say so, and more time to say it in. Any present-giving fathers, 
mothers, nncles. annts. brothers, or sisters, who have a care for the little 
people, may safely order these for home cousumption."'— T/te Hartford 
Oiurchman. 

" A charming series of stories for the younger class of readers, full of in- 
teresting incidents and good moral and religious iusiruction, brou;,'Lt down 
to the comprehension of a child in such a way as to produce a salutary im- 
pression. They are calculated also to teach parents how to keep children 
employed in what is pleasant and useful, thus superseding the necessity of 
imposing so many restraints to keep them from evil. This is apt to be the 
great fault in the management of children. They are given nothing inno- 
cent and useful with which to employ their active, restless minds, and then 
parents wonder that they need be always in mischief. Rosie's mother better 
comprehended the wants of a child, and forestalled temptations to end by 
incentives to good.'"— Springfield Jjaily Union. 

TXDEB THE HOLLY; or, Christmas at Hopeton Grange. A 
Book for Girls. By Mrs. Hosmkr and Miss . 12mo. Illus- 
trated. Cloth., extra, cl.50. 

" And this we can and do most confidently recommend to parents who are 
aithfully striving to provide only wholesome food for the intellectual appe- 
tite of their children. The tone of the book is pure and healthful, the style 
easy and graceful, and the incidents are such as to give pleasure without at 
all kindling the passion for exciting fiction, which is so rampant among the 
young people of our C^y."— Maryland Church Mecord. 

" This is entitled, ' A Book for Girls.' but it would interest the youth of 
either sex. It is a succession of tales told at the Christmas season. We can 
recommend them all for their intprest and moral. It is for ' children of a 
larger growth,' not a mere story-book for the little ones."— I'hiladelphia 
Jjaily Age. 

LEXNY, THE ORPHAN; or, Trials and Triumphs. Illustrated, 
by Faber. 16mo. Price, S1J25. 

"A storybook of an orphan boy, who is thrown loose upon the world by 
acontiagration. in which Lis mother and only surviving parent is burnt. 
The varieties of e.Tperif'nce. both sorrowful and happy, through which the 
boy passes, are wrought up into a story of no little power, and yet are such 
as often occtj- in actual life. The religious teachings of the book are good, 
and penetrate the entire stmcture of the story. We recommend it cor- 
dially to a place in the ajunday -school library.'— iS'undo^-.SVAc/oi Tunts, PLila- 
delpnia. 

•'The author of this book has written some of the best Sunday-school 
books which have rec^-ntlv been issued from the press of the American Sun- 
dav School Union. The volume belore us portrays the trials of a little boy, 
who loses his mother in early life, and is subjected to the intrigues of a de- 
figning person, from which he obtains a happy deliveranre. The story is 
well planned and written, and it^ moral and religious lessons are good."— 
Wtfkly Frecdrnan, 'isbvr Brunswick, N. J. 



i ail 



* i w I s - : : : ©« rsr'ck sh^^^eri. 



.i»*el%- 



j^jHtat, 





10 PORTER & COATES' PUBLICATIONS. 

MISS H. B. McKEEVER, 

Author of " The Flounced Robe, and "What it Cost," Edith's Ministry," 
Woodcliffe," "Silver Threads," &c., &c. 

These stories have the merit of being entertaining, instructive, and really 
much superior to tlie common run of J uveniles. The Springlield Repablican, 
whicli is competent authority, pronounces tliem the best and handsomest 
Juvenile BooIls of the season."— i^/ons BepuOlican, 

" Miss McKeever alwaj'S writes with point and meaning, and in a manner 
to gain and hold the 'cittention."—Sunday-iSch(jol Times. 

ELEANOR'S THREE BIRTHDAYS. " Charity seeketli not her 
own." Illustrated. 16mo., 295 pp., $1.00. 

MARY LESLIE'S TRIALS. "Is not easily provoked." Illus- 
trated. 16mo., $1.00. 

LUCY FORRESTER'S TRIUMPHS. "Thinketh no evil, believ- 
eth all things, hopeth- all things." Illustrated. 16mo. Price, 
$1.00. 

R. M. BALLANTYNE. 

New and beautiful editions of these world-renowned books, second only 
to those of Cooper and Marryatt, and better than those of Llayue Reid, 
in the pictures presented to tlie reader of wild life among the Indians, the 
hairbreadth escapes and fierce deliglits of a hunters' life, and the perils of 
"Life on the Ocean Wave." Ballantyne's name is well known to every 
intelligent boy of spirit. Leading the reader into the jungles and forests 
of Alrica, sweeping over the vast expanse of our western prairies, " last in 
the ice" of the Polar regions, or coasting the shores of sunny climes, he 
ever presents new and enclianting pictures of adventure or l)Pauty to 
enchain the attention, absorb the interest, excite the feelings, and always 
at the same time instructing the reader. 

THE GORILLA HUNTERS. A Tale of the Wilds of Africa. 16mo. 
illustrated, cloth, extra, $1.25. 
"Thoroughly at liome on subjects of adventure. Like all his stories for 
boys, thrilling in interest and abounding in incidents of every k.iud."— The 
Quiver, London. 

THE DOG CRUSOE. A Tale of the Western PrairieK. 16mo, illus- 
trated, cloth, extra, $1.25. 

"This is another of Mr. Ballantyne's excellent stories for the young. 
They are all well written, full of romantic incidents, and are of no doubt- 
ful moral tendency; on the contrary, they are invariably found to embody 
sentiments of true piety, manliness and \ivi\xQ.''— Inverness Advertiser. 

GASCOYNE, THE SANDAL-WOOD TRADER. A Tale of the 
Pacific. 16nio, illustrated, cloth, extra, $1,25. 

"'Gascoyne' will rivet the attention of every one, whether old or young, 
who pursues W— Edinburgh Courant. 

FREAKS ON THE FELLS; or, Three Months' Rustication. And 
why I did not become a Sailor. Illustrated, 16nio, cloth, extra, 
$1.25. 

" Mr. Ballantyne's name on the title-page of a book, has for some years 
been a guaranty to buyers that the volume is cheap at its price."— io?idon 
Athenceum. 

THE WILD MAN OF THE WEST. A Tale of the Rocky Moun- 
tains. 16mo. Illustrated, cloth, extra, $1.25. 
This is generally considered the best of Mr. Ballant^/ne's famous narra- 
tives of Indian warfare and border life. In this field he is second oulj' to 
Cooper. 

SHIFTING WINDS. A Story of the Sea. Cloth, extra, illustrated. 
$1.25. 



PORTER & COATES' PUBLICATIONS. 11 



R. M. BALLANTYNE— Second Series. 

" Indulgent fathers and good uncles will look a long time before they will 
find books more interesting or instructive for boys tnan these. In the four 
volumes tlie author introduces his young readers to the wonders of the Arctic 
re"-ions the wild hunting-grounds of the Hudson's Bay Company, the rugged 
coast and midnight sun of Norway, and the exciting chase or the monsters 
of the deep on the pathless fields of the ocean. He is quite at home among 
the scenes he describes, and has the faculty of taking ttie boys along with 
him in his narrative, and making them feel at home in his company. His 
object is to give information and to inculcate sound principles of virtue, and 
he min"-les en ugh of fancy with the fact and the moral lesson to make both 
more impressive and the more sure to be remembered. The boy who reads 
these volumes at the time when his mind is most susceptible to the stirring 
scenes of ppril and adventure, will cultivate a taste for more complete and 
elaborate works of travel and discovery, in mature years."— .Kev. Daniel 
March, D.D. 

FIGHTING THE WHALES ; or, Doings and Dangers on a Fishing 
Cruise. Witli four full-page Illustrations. 18mo., Illustrated, 
75 cents. 

AWAY IN THE WILDERNESS; or, Life Among the Red In- 
dians and Fur-Traders of North America. 18mo., Illustrated, 
Cloth, extra, 75 cents. 
It is one of the most delightful books this famed author has written. 
Whilst describing the exciting adventures of Indian life, he conveys new 
and attractive information about the far north portion of our continent. 

Seldom, if ever, has there been a better description of life in the lands of 
the Hudson's Bay Company, than is found in this little work. 

FAST IN THE ICE ; or. Adventures in the Polar Regions. 18mo. 
Illustrated. Cloth, extra, 75 cents. 

"Is attractive and useful. There is no more practical way of communi- 
cating elementary information than that which has been adopted in this 
series. When we see contained in 144 small pages, as in " Fast in the Ice," 
such information as men of fair education should possess about icebergs, 
Northern lights, Esquimaux, musk-oxen, bears, walruses, etc., together 
with all the ordinary incidents of an Arctic voyage, woven into a clear con- 
nected narrative, we must admit that a good work has been done, and that 
the author deserves the gratitndeof young people of all classes."— ionrfon 
Athenceum. 

CHASING THE SUN; or, Rambles in Norway. ISmo. Illustrated. 
Cloth, extra, 75 cents. 

Describing a country almost new to us, the author tells of many strange 
natural curiosities, of the manners and customs of the people, and the 
curious modes of travel and conveyance. 

ANNE BOWMAN. 

THE BEAR HUNTERS OP THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS. 16mo. 
Illustrated. Cloth, extra, $1.25. 
A story of trapper life in the Rocky Mountains. A better insight of real 
life in these uncivilized wilds is gained from books like this than from scores 
of the dry details of travellers. 

ADVENTURES IN CANADA; or. Life in the Woods. 16mo. 
Illustrated. Cloth, $1.25. 
This is not a mere work of fiction, but the true narrative of a bright boy who 
roughed it in the bush when Canada, the home of adventure and spoirting, 
was much wilder than it is now. The boys, especially, will be charmed with 
the adventures with Indians, bears, and wolves, tne racoon hunts and duck 
shooting; while the older class of readers will be drawn to it by its charm- 
ing description of the scenery, and condition of what may, belore long, be- 
come a part of the United States. 



12 PORTER & COATES' PUBLICATIONS. 

FOSTER'S TRANSLATION. 

THE THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS ; or. The Arabian Nights' 
Entertainment. A new edition. With eight full-page illustra- 
tions. Large 12mo, cloth, extra, $1.50. 
"More widely diffused amonsr Ihe nations of the earth than any other 
product of the human mind. While it is read or recited to crowds of eager 
listeners in the Arab coffee-houses of Asia and Africa, it is just as eagerly 
perused on the banks of the Tagus, the Tiber, the Seine, the Thames, the 
Hudson, the Mississippi, and the Ganges. , . . While there are children 
on earth to love, so long will the 'Arabian Nights' be loved."— Appleton's 
American Encyclopedia, article ''Arabian Xii/hts." 

D. W. BELISLE. 

THE AMERICAN FAMILY ROBINSON ; or, The Adventures of 
a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West. 16mo. Illus- 
trated. Cloth, extra, $1.25. 

DANIEL DE FOE. 

THE LIFE AND ADVENTURES OF ROBINSON CRUSOE. In- 
cluding a Memoir of the Author, and an Essay on his Writings. 
Large 12mo. Illustrated. Cloth, extra. Price, $1.50. 
Carefullj' printed from new stereotype plates, with large, clear, open type, 
this is the best, as well as the cheapest, edition of this charming work pub- 
lishcd 

" Perhaps there exists no work, either of instruction or entertainment, in 
the English language, which has been more generally read and more uni- 
versally admired, than ' The Life and Adventures of Bobinson Crusoe.' It 
is difficult to say in what the charm consists, by which persons of all classes 
and denominations are thus fascinated; yet the majority of readers will re- 
collect it as among the first works that awakened and interested their youth- 
ful attention, and feel, even in advanced life and in the maturity of their 
understanding, that there are still associated with Robinson Crusoe the sen- 
timents peculiar to that period, when all is bright, which the experience of 
after-life tends only to darken and destroy."— <S'ir Walter Scott. 

JEAN RODOLPHE WYSS. 

THE SWISS FAMILY ROBINSON; or. The Adventures of a 
Father, Mother, and four Sons, on a Desert Island. Two parts, 
complete in one volume, illustrated. Large 12mo. Cloth, extra, 
Price, $1.50. 

GRIMM. 

POPULAR GERMAN TALES AND HOUSEPIOLD STORIES. 
Collected by the Brothers Grimm. With nearly 200 illustra- 
tions by Edward H. Wehnert. Complete in one volume. New 
edition. Fine English cloth, bev. bds., full gilt back and side 
stamp, S2.50 ; half calf, gilt, $4.50. 
The stories in these volumes are world-renowned, and they will continue 

to be read, as they Ion;? have been, in different languages, and to charm and 

delight not only the young, but many readers in mature life who love the 

recollections of childhood and its innocent diversions. 

COUNTESS DE SEGUR. 

FRENCH FAIRY TALES. Translated by I\Irs. Coleman and her 
daughters. With ten full-page illustrations, by Gustave Dore 
and Jules Didier. 16mo, price, $1.50. 

The Countess de Segur, the authoress of this charming work, and the 
mother of the wife of the French ambassador at Florence, the brilliant Ba- 
roness Malaret, is a Russian lady, and a daughter of the heroic Prince 
Rostopchin, who ordered the burning of Moscow, when Napoleon captured 
that devoted city. .^ , , .,^ ^ . ,., 

" Not many of the fairy stories written for children are so admirably con- 
trived or so charmingly written as these."— Worcester Bally Spy. 



PORTER & COATES* PUBLICATIONS. 13 

W. S. GILBERT. 

THE BAB BALLADS; or, Much Sound and Little Sense, With 
113 illustrations by the author. Square 12mo., cloth, bev. gilt 
edges, $1.75. 

These Ballads, first published In periodicals, rapidly achieved a whim- 
sical popularity, which soon demanded their publication in a collected 
form. Much of this is due to the series of inexpressibly funny drawings 
by the author, who is happy in being artist enough to interpret his own 
humor in these admirable sketches: we pity the man who cannot 
appreciate and enjoy them. The Ballads will rank with the best of 
Thackeray, Bon Gaultier, or Ingoldsby. Let every one who in these dull 
times has the blues, procure a copy as the cheapest remedy. While it is a 
nearly perfect/ac ^simile of the English copy, it is only half the price. 

"Everybody likes, occasionally, a little sensible nonsense. 'Mother Goose' 
Is enjoyed in cliildhood, and something similar, but more advanced, is 
needed to provoke a smile on a wearied face in later years. This volume of 
comic poems answers such a purpose; some of them have a sly moral, while 
others are simply amusing from their supreme absurdity. The mirth is 
aided by the author's original cuts, which are quite in keeping with the 
poetry."— .Advance, Chicago, the Great Religious Weekly. 

C. M. METZ. 

DRAWING-BOOK OF THE HUMAN FIGURE. With many Ex- 
amples from the best Studies of tlie Old Masters, beautifully 
engraved in the first style of the art. Folio, half morocco, an- 
tique, $7.50. 

H. B. STAUNTON. 

THE AMERICAN CHESS PLAYER'S HANDBOOK. Teaching 
the Rudiments of tlie Game, and giving an analysis of all the 
recognized openings, amplified by appropriate games actually 
played by Morphy, Horwitz, Auderssen, Staunton, Paulson, 
Montgomery, Meek, and others. From the work of Staunton. 
Illustrated. 16rao, cloth, extra, bev. bds. $1.25. 
" Among the great wants of students of this noble game of chess has been 
a handbook which .should occupy a middle ground between the large and 
expensive work of Staunton and the ten cent guides with which the country 
is tlooded. This want is happily supplied by the present volume. It is au 
abridgment of Staunton's work, and contains full accounts and descriptions 
of the common openings and defences, besides a large number of illustra- 
tive games and several endings and problems. It is a book which will be 
decidedly useful to all beginners in the game, and interesting to those who 
are already proficient in it."— Peoria Transcript. 

"Will prove an invaluable guide for the admirers of the great and strate- 
gic game of chess. It should be iu the hands of every chess-player."— 
Gnlesburg Rejyublican. 

" It is the bfst manual for the beginner with which we are acquainted,— 
exceedingly clear and intelligible."— iV'etu Orleans JPicayune. 

SARAH E. SCOTT. 

EVERY-DAY COOKERY, FOR EVERY FAMILY. Containing 
nearly luOO Receipts adapted to moderate incomes, and com- 

})rising the best and most economical methods of roasting, 
wiling, broiling and stewing all kinds of meat, fish, poultry, 
game and vegetables: simple and Inexpensive instructions 
for making pies, puddings, tarts, and all other pastry ; how to 
pickle and preserve fruits and vegetables; suitable cookery 
for invalids and children; food in season, and how to choose 
it; the best Avays to make domestic wines and syrups, and 
ample receipts for bread, cake, soups, gravies, sauces, desserts. 
Jellies, brandied fruits, soaps, perfumes, &c., Ac^^and full direc- 
tions for carving. Illustrated. 16mo., cloth. Price, $1,25. 



g 



14 PORTER & COATES PUBLICATIONS. 

MISS WETHERILL. 

ROBIXSaX CRUSOE'S FARM YARD ; or, Stories and Anecdotes 
of Animals, illustrating their Habits. By Miss Wetherill, au- 
thor of "T\'ide, Wide "World," " Queechy," "Ellen Mont- 

romerv's Book Shelf,"' &g. "With eight full-page illustrations. 

square 16mo, 228 pp., cloth, gilt, Sl.OO. 

CoxTENTS.— The Cow ; The Horse ; The Chamois : The Camel ; The Rein- 
deer: The Dog; The Monkev; The Polar Bear; The Buffalo; The Goat; 
The Wolf; The Beaver; The Squirrel; The Tiger; The Elephant; The 
Sheep; The Ermine; The Lion; The Seal; The Stag; The Hyena; The 
Hog: The Hare; The Cat. 

MISCELLANEOUS. 

THE LIBRARY ; or, What Books to Read, and How to Buy them. 
A few practical hints, by an old Bookbuyer. 16nio, paper cover, 
10 cents per copy ; iS.W per hundred. 

Everybody has felt the want of a reliable guide in selecting books for their 
library. In this little manual, the author has endeavored tirst. in a prelimi- 
nary essay, to point out how to read bo«ks to the best advantage, and how 
to buy them: second, what "books to buy, by giving lists of some fifteen 
hundred volumes of standard works, such as are ne^e^sary to every well- 
selected library; these are given with the number of volumes, the best and 
diflFerent editions, and the prices. It thus forme a complete and intelligent 
guide, as to what is be"?! to buy first, such as every person of any pretensions 
to literary taste should possess. 

• 
THOUGHTS OF PEACE ; or. Strong Hope and Consolation for the 
Bearer of the Cross, From the last London edition. Beauti- 
fully printed on tinted paper, with carmine border. Square 
16mo. Fine English cloth, bevelled boards, red edges, $1..5), 

"Bemarkable as the assertion Is, that very many of the best works are 
the product of the chastened and afiiicted in society, it is nevertheless true 
that the world is greatly enriched by the presence of invalid gifted minds in 
all ages. This delightful httle volume is the product of one who has felt the 
aculeness of disease, and it illustrates the experience of one who has long 
been an invalid. The Scriptural texts, and poetic suggestions, evince a rich 
acquaintance with the scriptures and the poets. The book is beautifully 
printed on tinted paper, red line border, and richly bound. Many would 
prize it as a gift book."— Pitt^&ur^r Gazette. 

" This is a reprint from the latest London edition, and is a beautiful little 
work, both in style of tj-pography and binding, and in the sentiments judi- 
ciously selected and collated from the Sacred Scriptures and poets. It com- 
prises three hundred and sixty-five of the most soul-comforting and inspiring 
texts of the Bible— one for each day of the year. Eollowing each text is a 
short selection from some hymn, or sacred poem of corresponding senti- 
ment. 2^0 better souvenir could be given to one having experienced some 
of life's sorrows— and who has not !— and who has learned to look for con- 
solation to Holy Writ."— .a/auc/i Chunk Grozette. 

PAPA'S BOOK OF ANIMALS. Wild and Tame. Chiefly from 
the writings of Rev. J. G. Wood and Thos. Bingley. With 
sixteen large and spirited drawings, by H. C. Bispham. Small 
4to., fine English cloth, gilt, be v. bds. Price, $1.2.5. 

SLOVENLY PETER; or, Cheerful Stories and Funny Pictures for 
Good Little Folks. With nearly two hundred engravings. 
Beautifully colored. Printed on heavy paper. Large 4to. 
Cloth, bevelled boards, extra, Sl.75. 

A new edition of this charming book, a standard among juveniles. Surely 
lessons of stern morality and humanity were never more pleasantly and 
effectually taught than in this book. 



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